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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERirA 







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ESSAYS. 



ESSAYS 



BY 



EMILY OLIVER GIBBES 




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NEW YORK 

CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM & CO. 

766 Broadway 

1894 



A 



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Copyright, 1894, 

BY 

Emily Olfver Gibbes. 



CONTENTS. 

Page 
AN ESSAY ON ERNEST RENAN'S "LIFE OF 

JESUS." 9 

AN ESSAY ON DE TUNZELMANN'S " ELECTRIC- 
ITY IN MODERN LIFE." . . . 79 
AN ESSAY ON MIVART'S *' CHRISTIANITY AND 

ROMAN PAGANISM." . . . . 95 

AN ESSAY ON STRAUSS'S '' LIFE OF JESUS." IO9 



AN ESSAY 
ON ERNEST RENAN'S LIFE OF JESUS, 



FROM THE 



FRENCH TWENTY-SECOND EDITION, REVISED 
AND AUGMENTED, OF 1893. 

[9] 



AN ESSAY 
ON ERNEST KENAN'S LIFE OF JESUS. 



In reading Kenan's book it has seemed to us 
that he was under two great influences when he 
wrote it — one his early Koman Catholic Church 
training, and the other Strauss* book on the life 
of Jesus. Both of these influences are at great 
extremes, and totally opposite to each other. 
The first believes all that has been added on to 
the Christian belief, until Jesus is almost forgot- 
ten ; and the other seems anxious tc kill the 
Christian religion completely. 

Nevertheless, Kenan's book must do great 
good for the Christian religion, pure and simple, 
as Jesus gave it to us. This good will be done 
among those men who, so far, are unwilling 
to believe in the life of Jesus. In reading 



12 AN ESSAY 

Renan's book we have made some marginal 
notes, which we here collect together, giving 
the numbers of the pages of his book on which 
we made the notes. 

In his Preface, page 6, he says he does not 
believe in the supernatural for the same reason 
that he does not believe in Centaurs and Hip- 
pogrifles, and his reason for not doing so is, that 
these have never been seen. If we only believed 
what z£/^j^z£^, and denied the existence of what we 
did not see, what a very poor life ours would be ! 
As for the CentaurSy and such beings as half 
animal, half man, they may have existed when 
animal was turning into mankind; we do not 
believe that any idea of Centaurs could come 
spontaneously to the mind of man. Rcnan also 
says here: "The Gospels are legends; they 
may contain history ; but certainly all in them is 
not history." Here we would ask if there is any 
history written which is wholly true, above all, 
history of eighteen hundred -and ninety-three 
years ago. We believe there is nothing super- 
natural, as all things are possible to God and we 
know very little of His laws. 



13 

Page 9. '* We cannot believe in the supernatu- 
ral, because we cannot believe in a thing of which 
there is no experimental trace to be found in the 
world." This is not good reasoning, as science 
has proved, for science, year by year, is experi- 
mentally proving things to be true, which were 
not even dreamed of years ago. " History is 
essentially disinterested." But is it so? His- 
tory is written by fallible man, and he is fenced 
in by many things, such as school training, 
the thoughts of his early friends, his own per- 
sonal views of the history he is writing, his likes 
and dislikes, which, if he wishes it or not, in some 
way bias what he is writing. " The orthodox 
theologian may be compared to a bird in a 
cage ; he is forbidden any voluntary movement." 
This is very true ; at the same time it is a pro- 
tection in some way to the faith, when the faith 
is to be taught by a set of persons who do so 
only as a personal business, gain of money, or 
any other gain, — it is dogmatic and the spiritual 
world will be far advanced over the carnal when 
dogma can be put on one side. 

Page 10. Here Renan says that we will not 



14 AN ESSAY 

arrive at a criticism of the Christian reh'gion, 
until criticism comes from a mind which knows no 
theology, and which neither thinks of defending 
nor of overturning the dogmas. This is what we 
think, and God grant that to our mind, which is 
free from dogmas, and for which we care not at all, 
there ma}^ come the truth of Jesus. Renan thinks 
that these questions should not be agitated with 
any prejudice except that which constitutes the 
essence of reason. We think that reason in 
mankind is not and cannot be infallible. ** The 
fourth Gospel is mostly written by St. John, 
though it may have been altered by John's disci- 
ples. The discourses are often free compositions, 
expressing only the way the author understood 
the Spirit of Jesus." We think, of course, this 
must have been so, we have always understood, 
it to be so ; but as the Gospel, spoken of here, 
must have been written at first by some one near 
Jesus all the time, wc accept the author's view of 
the Spirit of Jesus. 

Page w. "The fourth Gospel is not at all 
written by St. John. It is a work of imagination 
or an allegory, where the author does not mean 



ON ERNEST RENAn's LIFE OF JESUS. 15 

to write about the life of Jesus, but about the 
idea which he has of Jesus." We think, if this 
was so, that his idea of Jesus was inspired. 

Pa^e 17. Renan says: " The text of the Gos- 
pels is not history, it does not give certainty, but 
it gives something. We must not follow the text 
blindly, nor must we deprive ourselves unjustly 
of its testimony; we must try to find out 
what it hides, without ever being absolutely 
sure that we have found it." In this we fully 
agree, for all is spiritual, and it is only as our 
inward soul understands the life of Jesus that it 
appears to us as true ; so we read it in the 
Gospels, and so we judge ourselves. 

We think the reason that the Jews or the 
Romans put Jesus to death was because the Jews 
could not understand that the Kingdom of Jesus 
was a spiritual one and not an earthly one. Some 
make out that Jesus was only man, as they are 
able in their hearts to understand him ; they are 
not able in their minds to see that though Jesus 
was wholly a man in his human body, yet he was 
more than man by the Spirit of God which was 
in him. 



16 AN ESSAY 

Page 19. *' It is best to keep close to the written 
account and keep clear of impossibilities." We 
would ask here : what would our great-great- 
grandfathers have thought in their day had they 
been told of the things done in our day by 
science ? We believe it not only possible, but 
true, that Jesus could appear to Paul ; and the 
onl}^ way to receive spiritual knowledge is to 
have a vivid and preoccupied imagination. 

Page 22. We must here take up the defense 
of women and children. It w^as Jesus that told us 
that children are near the Kingdom of Heaven, 
and by his life we see that women were able best 
to understand that life. 

Page 25. We here find that Renan does not 
fully understand the human nature of Jesus and 
his Divine nature ; both are so plain to us when 
we read the Gospels. 

Page2j. We are sorry to see that the foolish 
so-called miracles of the Rornan Church are 
mentioned at all with the signs which Jesus gave 
as to his knowledge and power of the great laws 
of nature. 



ON EBNEST RENAn's LIFE OF JESUS. 17 

Page 28. " Science is pure, for science has 
nothing of practice ; she does not touch men ; to 
spread knowledge and gain disciples does not 
concern her; her duty is to prove, not to per- 
suade nor convert." We see science in another 
light; we think she has much to do with man, 
for she teaches him whence he came, to what 
he goes in nature, and it is only by practice that 
she can prove anything as true — she cannot live 
without disciples to spread her knowledge and 
when she proves^ she persuades and converts. 

Page 30. We think that when Renan says that 
the religions fall one by one, he must mean that 
dogmas fall one by one ; for dogmas to us are a 
very different thing from our belief in God, and 
in His direct words to us through Jesus Christ. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Page 49. We are glad to see here that the Gos- 
pel of Luke cannot be doubted to have been 
written by him. As St. Luke was a physician. 



18 AN ESSAY 

he could testify to the truth of the Gospel ac- 
count of the birth of Christ. 

P^g^ S^' "As they thought th :5 end of the 
world near, no one cared to write books for the 
future." What reason had they to think this? 
Jesus had told them that no one but God knew 
when the world would end. 

Page 62. Renan doubts if John, the simple 
fisherman, could have written the Gospel bear- 
ing John's name, and yet it was after the 
apostles had received the gift of the Holy Ghost 
that they spoke in tongues which, before, were 
unknown to them. 

Page 70. We do not think that it is possible 
that so soon after the death of Jesus the apostles 
could fall into mysteries which were of no use. 
There is a spiritual mystery in all the words of 
Jesus, and therefore in the written words of the 
Gospels, which it is our duty to find out. 

Page 75. Renan tells us here that many a book, 
once thought to be heretical, has forced its way 
into the church and become a book of faith ; 
this being so how vigilant those in the church 



should be, for Satan, whose world we are on, 
will, to the end, fight the Kingdom of God, which 
is in our souls. 

Page 89. This comparison between the Gos- 
pels and Napoleon's soldiers' writing a history of 
Napoleon's life, we think is in very bad taste, to 
say the least of it. The disciples of Jesus were 
undoubtedly helped in their account of Jesus' 
life by the Spirit within them, that is in writing 
it they were able to see some of the spiritual 
meaning. 

Page 103. How can Renan speak in the same 
breath of the religions of Jesus and Mahomet ? 
The first lived by giving us the true life ; the 
second lived by taking life. 

Page 104. '' God has revealed himself before 
Jesus, God will reveal himself after him." We 
think not, for the God of the Jews was accord- 
ing to their showing cruel^ the God in Christ was 
love. 

Page 105. Renan ends his introduction by 
saying that the manifestations of God, hid in the 
human conscience, are all the same, but we think 
this can only be so since Christ lived among us. 



20 AN ESSAY 

We knew not God in that way until we knew 
Jesus ; we must not forget that Jesus showed us 
God as we never saw him before, the Jewish his- 
tory proves that this is so, but, as Renan says, 
Jesus belongs to every one in whom is a human 
heart. 

THE CHAPTERS ON THE LIFE OF 

JESUS. 

Page 2. " As soon as man found himself differ- 
ent from mere animal, he became religious, that 
is, he saw in nature something beyond the reality, 
and for himself something beyond death." This 
was when mankind was evolved from animal, at 
the time when the Bible tells us that man began 
to call upon Go 

Page i^. "The unknown author of the book 
of Daniel, in any case, had a decisive influence on 
the religious events which were going to trans- 
form the world." All of which must refer to 
the time of Jesus* life on this earth. 

Page 21. We do not see anything difficult in 
understanding that Jesus was born in Bethle- 
hem, and not in Nazareth, for when we come to 



21 

the question of paying a tax, it removes all 
doubt. 

Page 23. And yet the generation is given in 
Matthew and Luke. 

Page 30. This idea of a church built at Naza- 
reth is a Roman Catholic Church idea, for the 
building would soon become the idol, and Christ 
would be forgotten ; for it was Christ who told 
us that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, and 
not at a spot of land called Nazareth or at Jeru- 
salem. 

Page 32. " It is, however, doubtful that Jesus 
understood the Hebrew writings in their original 
language." We read that Jesus, as a child, was 
able to ask questions and give answers to the 
scribes in the temple; but, if what Renan says 
were so, then it is a greater proof that Jesus, by 
the Spirit within him, knew all things. 

Page 36. Here Renan tells us that in those 
days no one studied Greek, or very few did 
so ; that Greek studies, which we understand to 
mean Greek writings, were hardly good enough 
to be worn even by the women on their gar- 
ments. Now we think that if the women had on 



22 AN ESSAY 

their garments Greek writings they must have 
tried to understand the writings, and perhaps 
they gained some knowledge of the prophesies 
of Christ that way. 

Page 42. Jesus could not have been in all 
things like other children, for he knew exactl}^ 
what kings, and those in earthly power, were 
inwardly. 

Page Af}^. We do not agree here with Renan, 
for, as we in the flesh are the children of the devil, 
the maladies of the flesh are of the devil. How 
could Jesus not believe in the devil, when he had 
come to this earth to take the body of flesh, and 
in it to fight the devil, the father of the body 
of flesh, and to dwell among the children of the 
devil? He came for the sake of the spark from 
Heaven which lived still in these bodies of flesh 
and blood, to show them the way to overcome the 
flesh and enter Heaven again through the only 
door open to them — that door is Jesus Christ. 

Page i\\. Renan here thinks that Jesus had a 
strong faith in the connexions between man- 
kind and God, and that the belief of Jesus in the 
power of man was exaggerated. We think that 



OK ERNEST RENAN^S LIFE OF JEStJS. 23 

lime has proved that this is not as Renan thinks, 
for man has the power which Jesus said he 
would have. Science, which is of God, proves 
that this is so. A man of science must have 
faith in his work, he must have an inward con- 
viction that what he attempts to do can be done, 
otherwise he would not persevere until he 
succeeds. The physician and the chemist are 
not yet half way on the road of knowledge. 
Jesus knew all knowledge. Jesus was not as 
other children, and when he attained the age to 
begin his vocation, it was right to break away 
from earthly relations, who did all they could 
to prevent him from following his vocation. 
Where would we be, had Jesus cared more for 
the relations of the body than the relations of 
his soul ? And how could Jesus think more of 
the body of flesh and blood, which he came to 
dwell within for our sakes, and which was also 
animal, the same as our body, when he, Jesus, 
knew whence his Spirit was? He was Spirit 
from Heaven. Are we to think more of the 
clothes which cover our bodies, than of our 
bodies themselves? 



24 AN ESSAY 

Page 48. Renan tells us that Jesus was not a 
theologian, if this word means knowledge of 
God. We think we only know God by what 
Jesus has told us; but we agree that Jesus had 
no dogmas in system, that he had a fixed per- 
sonal resolution, which, being stronger than any 
other created wish, still guides human destiny. 

P<^g(^ 55- Here Renan speaks of a noble 
woman, the mother of the Maccabees. He does 
not see the women of the Bible in the light in 
which we see them. 

Page 58. Jesus did not^attach any importance 
to the politics of his time, and Renan thinks that 
Jesus may have been misinformed about them. 
We think Jesus knew all about what was passing, 
for in his teachings he shows that this was so. 
He certainly took no interest in worldly things. 

Page 64. In Galilee they despised this life, 
but before this the Jews and others thought the 
greatest blessing was a long life on this earth. 

Page 75. Jesus was a carpenter by trade. 
Renan says this was not a humbling position. 
We say no, truly, for Jesus has told us that 
God worked, therefore he ivorked ; this he said 



25 

in reference to his work for our souls, but his 
example in working we should follow. 

Page 75. Renan here makes the mistake of 
not understanding that passion is not the Bible 
love which was in Jesus. Jesus came to be with 
those who sin, so as to prove that they can be 
saved. 

Page yy. " Jesus had a high idea of the Divinity, 
which he did not get from the Jewish religion.'* 
Jesus had been with God before he came to 
us, so his idea of God was true, and therefore 
high. 

Page 78. Renan tells us that Jesus does not 
say that he is God — not for a moment even ; he 
believes himself in communication with God, and 
that he is God's son; and the highest concep- 
tion of God, among human beings, was Jesus' con- 
ception of God. We think that here Renan 
shows that he felt or understood the double 
nature of Jesus. 

Page 84. Refers to the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, 
2nd verse, — supposed to foretell of Jesus. We 
think this means that Jesus was without the 



2^ Ajf sssAr 

earthly beauty of an earthly kingdom, and not 
the person of Jesus, for that must have been 
perfect. 

Pagf go. " A pure religion, without priests, 
and without outward practice, resting all on the 
sentiments of the heart, and on the imitation of 
God." How are we to know zi'/iat God is so as 
to imitate him, but by the life and words of 
Jesus? Are we to imitate the God of the old 
Jewish nation ? That would be a very diflfer- 
ent thing from the God which Jesus made us 
know. 

Pa^e 94. ** No one was less the priest than 
Jesus. No one was more the enemy of forms, 
which smother religion, under the pretence of 
defending it, than Jesus. Into this world has 
come, through Jesus, a totally new idea of 
religion, founded on the purity of the heart and 
kindness to all. This idea of Jesus is so high 
that the Christian church has not been able to 
follow it, though given by its Master, and even 
in these days only a few souls could understand 
it." After reading these words we have thought, 
as Renan has told us that Jesus was a Jew, 



ON" ERNEST BENAn's LIFE OF JESTTS. 2T 

born in the Jewish country, with all the surround- 
ings of the Jewish nation, beliefs, traditions, cus- 
toms and teachings of the scribes, and the Jew 
ish idea of God, that it is a \ery surprising fact 
that this high, pure and God-like idea of the true 
religion should come to one whose life, so far, was 
no different from those among whom Jesus lived. 
We think these words alone of Kenan's prove 
that Jesus was more than a human man ; and 
that Jesus' second nature — or rather, first nature 
— was Divine, and such must have been Kenan's 
thought of Jesus when he wrote these words. 
Why, then, as he continues the chapter, does 
Kenan fall back to think of Jesus as only a man — 
human, like himself? and then again, as he rea- 
sons, he realizes that Jesus was more than 
man, — "for Jesus was strong and powerful in 
words and actions for what is good, and with the 
price of his blood he made good triumph, and 
in that respect he has no equal ; his glory 
remains whole and will always be renewed." 

Pag-e loi. To think out any high thought or 
work, one must be alone. John the Baptist and 



28 AN ESSAY 

Jesus also were alone in the desert before they 
commenced their work. 

Page 105. " The belief in resurrections." If 
mankind thought that resurrections were pos- 
sible, tJie possible is far beyond what mankind is 
able to tJnnk. 

Page III. " Jesus showed that he thought John 
the Baptist superior to himself." We do not see 
this in the Bible, for it was Jesus who said that 
John was the greatest of prophets, but that he 
who was least in the Kingdom of Heaven was 
greater than John. 

Page 114. Renan thinks that Herodias was 
married to her uncle against her will ; we think 
her actions show that this was not so. 

Page 119. We agree with this, that the Chris- 
tian religion charmed the highest souls by being 
free from all outward form. 

Page 120. " In this world, such as it is, it is evil 
which reigns. Satan is the king of this world, 
and all obey him." Here we agree, as we have 
tried to show before this in our essay on the 
" Origin of Sin." 

Page 132. Renan says that the first thought of 



29 

Jesus — a thought so deep that probably it had 
no origin, but came from the very roots of his 
being — was that he was the son of God, inti- 
mate wuth the Father, and the executor of the 
Father's will ; all earthly things were only used 
by Jesus as instruments to advance the King- 
dom of God. A new sky and a new earth will 
be created, peopled with angels of God. We 
understand this new earth to have a spiritual 
meaning ; the abode of the souls of the children 
of God, equal then to the angels of God. 

Page 123. Jesus never tried to overthrow the 
government in any way — he submitted to the 
powers established. He despised the earth and 
all in it, so gaining the liberty of souls. 

Page 125. It was truly the kingdom of souls 
which Jesus founded. Yes, this is so, but we are 
sorry to see that Renan speaks of the history of 
this world ; we think that history has nothing 
to do with it, for this world is Satan's, and his 
children's flesh and blood bodies; the souls are 
God's children. 

Page 126. '' What was liberty for Jesus was 
the liberty of Truth, and when he gave us these 



30 AN ESSAY 

words : * Render to Cassar the things which are 
Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's,' 
he created something altogether different from 
politics, he created a refuge for souls in the midst 
of an empire of brutal force." How good this 
is, but when we come to these words : " Ciiristian- 
ity has compensated for the wrong it has done 
to civil virtues," we think this a strange idea, 
for are the " vertus civiles " of these da3-s differ- 
ent from those days, and are they virtues at all, 
even now, though much changed by the Chris- 
tian religion ? 

Page 127. " Jesus did not stop the current of 
the affairs of the earth of his da3% but he de- 
clared that politics were insignificant, and that 
country is not all, but man is first and above the 
citizen." We sa}-, not man, but man's soul ; the 
soul is not the body of flesh and blood, the soul 
does not live for this earth, or by the bread of 
this earth. But in this sentiment we agree with 
Renan ; this world, and all in it, is not worth the 
life of our soul, and the longer we live the more 
we see that the world is Satan's — there is so much 
that is disgusting and lowering in it; it is so ani- 



mal, even lower than the animals ; we are pris- 
oners here, — prisoners of Satan. 

Page 129. ** Do not believe that with sim- 
ple ideas of happiness or with individual mo- 
rality we can shake the world ; the idea of Jesus 
was much deeper; it was the most revolutionary 
idea that ever came into the human mind." 
We would say that in Jesus the thought was 
not all human, it was the Spirit of God. Re- 
nan's thoughts of Jesus are hampered by his Ro- 
man Catholic early training, and, trying to throw 
this off, he sees Jesus only as a human man ; 
at times he is forced, by his study of Jesus, to con- 
fess that Jesus was something more than a mere 
man, though a great man. 

Page \'}^\. "Jesus announced a great change, 
unequalled in human things, and in doing so 
he proclaimed the principles on which society 
has rested for eighteen hundred years." We 
think the change did commence, but that it has 
not yet reached its end ; it is slowly going on ; it 
has taken eighteen hundred and ninety-three 
years to effect some of it. The mistake is that 
we thought that it would come in our day, and 



AN ESSAY 



those before us thought that it would come in 
theirs. 

Page 132. Here Renan thinks that Jesus 
wished to put an end to riches and power. We 
do not think so, for Jesus would only wish this 
when they were used for evil. When he was on 
this earth he did good to the rich as well as to 
the poor. " Those who are to found the Kingdom 
of Heaven will not be the rich, nor the doctors, 
nor the priests ; they will be the women, and the 
humble ones." Renan seems, in a way, to agree 
with us, as we think the zuomcn were better able 
than the men to understand the teachings of 
Jesus. 

P'-'^S^ 133- Where does Renan find this? Be- 
fore this he has found that Jesus cared not for 
''officials " one way or the other. 

Page 137. " Jesus cared most to be called the 
Son of Man." If so, we think it was because 
Jesus took man's human body, consented to be 
man, so as to save the race of mankind, and that 
we might understand that being man, he under- 
stood mankind. 

Page 144. " The authorit}^ of the young 



33 

Master grew day by day ; the more they believed 
in him, the more he believed in himself." We 
would remark here that Jesus knew, long 
before they believed in him, who he was ; 
he knew this when he was but twelve years old, 
when he said he must do his Father's business, 
meaning God's. 

Page 147. Speaking of the difficulty of finding 
the exact spot of the places mentioned in the 
Gospels, Renan says, "It "seems as if a deep 
design hid them, and that the places will never 
be found where humanity would wish to kiss the 
print of the feet of Jesus." Without knowing 
it, he gives us the reason that they are not to be 
found. It is because mankind so readily fall into 
idolatry that they would kiss the ground and 
worship such a thing, and forget that Jesus has 
told them to worship God alone. If they love 
Jesus and would show him their love, it is not to 
be done by kissing the ground around Jerusalem ; 
it is by seeing that Jesus is in the souls of 
their fellow-beings, and by doing good to these, 
that they let Jesus see that they love him. 

Page 157. Here the women are mentioned, 



34: AX ESSAY 

Salome and others, who so readily understand 
and accept Jesus as the Son of God, and listen to 
all his teachings. These women were not 
thought to be unsexed because they followed 
with the men even to the death of Jesus. 
Renan does not see here what we see, that Jesus 
knew that women could understand his teach- 
ings, and were, in his sight, equal to men. 

Page 158. We do not think that the seven 
demons which Jesus cast out of Mar}^ of Mag- 
dala, were the nervous diseases that Renan 
thinks they were. They were evils of character, 
heart and mind ; no doubt some, if not all, were 
inherited, and against them this Mar}^ must 
have struggled to rid herself. We doubt if 
Jesus would have helped her in this, had he 
not known that it was her earnest wish to be 
rid of these evils, and not her wish to be gov- 
erned by them. It is this INIary who gives to 
the world the belief in the resurrection, for she 
was the first one to whom Jesus appeared after 
his death. 

Page 160. " At this time we do not see the 
mother of Jesus near him ; the family of Jesus 



ON ERNEST EENAn's LIFE OF JESUS. 35 

was not much with him, and it was only after his 
death that his mother obtained a great reputa- 
tion." We think, however, that his mother was 
the first to believe in Jesus. She pondered in her 
heart over the things connected with his birth, 
and she believed that he was able to turn the 
water into wine at the marriage feast. 

Page i6i. Here we have a comparison which 
might have been left out. How can Renan 
descend from his many high thoughts of Jesus, 
and speak in the same breath of Mahomet ? In 
reading this book it seems to us that Renan 
descends from these high and noble thoughts of 
Jesus, for some hidden reason, as if he feared that 
his convictions were leading him to prove too 
strongly the Divine in Jesus, and the Divine in 
Jesus, not being human history, he, Renan, 
makes these descents in thought, all through his 
book, so as to keep zvithin history. 

Page 169. Renan here tells us what he thinks 
was the cause of the success of Jesus in winning 
souls — *' one penetrating look, one word falling 
on a pure conscience." We think this is proof 
by itseU of the Divine in Jesus, for in both he 



36 AN ESSAY 

Spoke directl}^ to the soul or conscience of the 
soul. We are sorry to see Renan bring in Jeanne 
D'Arc here, for it was not affectation on the 
part of Jesus to bring to a person's mind a past 
circumstance in that person's life. Renan here 
proves that Jesus was superior to everything 
around him, that Jesus himself believed that the 
Spirit of God revealed these things to him, and 
that all believed that Jesus lived in a sphere in- 
accessible to others. We sa)' that as those around 
Jesus felt that this was so, we of these days feel 
within us that his life is also inaccessible to plain 
humanity, but can be followed by us in our souls. 
Page 171. Renan speaks of the great ignorance 
of those who followed Jesus — their ignorance 
was not ignorance of spiritual things — he thinks 
it strange that they believed in spirits. To be- 
lieve in these things now, we think, is not a proof 
of ignorance, but just the reverse ; for in these 
days it is thought to be very intelligent. The 
spirits of the departed no doubt live, but Jesus 
has told us that did they appear and speak to us 
it would do us no good, for if we will npt believe 



ON EKNEST ilENAN S LIFE OF JEStJfl. S7 

Moses and the Prophets, we would not believe 
the spirits of the departed. 

Page 174. Renan here tells us that Jesus, 
spoke in parables, that he did not get this from 
the Jewish system, but that it was Jesus* own idea. 

Page 178. We do not agree here ; for we can 
enjoy seeing these things — the sunshine, flowers, 
grass, shade, trees, fine views, mountains — with- 
out owning them, and we think that others can 
do the same. 

Page 180. Here we think Renan has failea to 
see the spiritual meaning in the words of Jesus, 
for the Kingdom of God cannot be bought, as 
Renan says, with earthly money. All this has a 
deeper meaning. It means that the man who 
discovers the true life of his soul, places every- 
thing else in connection with the body, as being 
beneath the value of the life of his sou?, and will 
sacrifice all earthly things which in any way 
prevent the growing life of his soul. 

Page 182. We do not agree with Renan here, 
for we have some in the Gospels who were rich 
yet good. We understand this to mean that 
being rich we may be indifferent to the suffer- 



88 AN ESSAT 

ings of others, thinking only of ourselves, and it 
also means unbelief in God, for the parable ends 
by saying that if we will not believe in what 
Moses and the Prophets have told us, we would 
not believe if one rose from the dead to tell us of 
God. Riches can only be gained honestly by 
someone working for them ; and Jesus has 
showed us that work is honorable ; it is not 
riches themselves but the use we put them to, in 
which is the good or the evil. 

i^^^^ 183. " The parable of the rich entering 
into the Kingdom of Heaven and the camel pass- 
ing through the eye of a needle." We think this 
means that because they are so well off they 
think not of God ; also they think that all things 
will go well with them. 

Page 186. ''That the poor alone are saved." 
In all this Renan has lost the spiritual meaning — 
for one can be poor in this world's riches, and 
also be desperately wicked in heart ; it means 
poor or humble in spirit. 

Page 191. Frangois d'Assise did not under- 
stand Jesus. We think so for the reason that 
Jesus never meant us to be idle and expect 



ON ERNEST EENAN*S LIFE OF JESUS. 39 

others to feed and clothe us, for Jesus set us the 
example of work, and those who work do not 
become beggars. Jesus told us that God worked 
and that he, Jesus, worked ; therefore here we 
do not agree with Renan, and we think that the 
true moralist should condemii this, for it is not 
the teaching of Jesus. Man shall not live by 
bread alone means that man's true life is his soul, 
and though the body must live its short life by 
bread, the soul does not live by the earthly 
bread. 

Page 195. " The turning of the water into wine 
at the wedding." Renan does not see the spirit- 
ual in this at all. We think that the carnal mar- 
riage was raised to a higher plane, permitted 
and blessed by the presence of Jesus ; a new life 
was instilled into the human frame, making it 
more able to follow the teachings of the Spirit. 

Page 198. Here Renan also thinks as we do, 
that women understood Jesus better than men. 

Page 199. " We must become as children to 
enter the Kingdom of Heaven." We understand 
this to be a child's faith, accepting what his 
father tells him, doubting nothing. 



40 AN ESSAY 

Renan also tells us here that the word Para- 
dise is Persian, and means a lovely garden. In 
our " Oriofin of Sin " we wrote that we think the 
name, Garden of Eden, was given by those who 
wrote Genesis as the only way they could think 
of Heaven, that there never was such a garden 
on this earth, and that the word Eden means 
Heaven. 

Page 218. Renan here names Nazareth as the 
birthplace of Jesus, making the same mistake 
that those of the days of Jesus also made. We 
see nothing hard to believe in the fact that Jesus 
was born in Bethlehem, even if there was noth- 
ing strange in the manner of his birth, for tax- 
ation is a very sure and positive thing. 

Page 243. " The Samaritan woman, or the wo- 
man of Sichem." We think that Jesus knew that 
this woman was capable of understanding the 
truths he told her. In a note here Renan says • 
" We cannot insist on the historic truth of this 
conversation, because either Jesus or the woman 
alone could repeat the words." We do not 
agree with this, because we are told that the 
woman went at once to the village and said to the 



ON ERNEST Kenan's life oe jesxts. 41 

men to come and see one who had told her these 
things, and that the people of the village said 
they believed in Jesus, not so much because 
of what she had told them, as because they were 
convinced themselves by Jesus. That God is a 
Spirit and we must worship him in Spirit, does 
not, in our mind, change the fact that Jesus will 
judge the men of this earth. Having lived in the 
flesh and blood body, having come to this earth 
to teach, suffer and die to save mankind, and to 
show us God's will, he is well fitted to judge us 
at the last. God's judgment alone, without the 
intercession of Jesus, could be only condemnation 
if we are the descendants of animals, the descend- 
ants through long evolution, of Satan, or the evil 
one, who was banished from Heaven. 

Page 246. We understand this to be the 
Kingdom of Heaven, God's message to our souls, 
perhaps his nearness to our souls which came to us 
by Jesus — the one and only opening for our souls 
to return to God whence they came. This, how- 
ever, could not be accomplished without vio- 
lence, for the Father of our flesh and blood bod- 
ies, which Fatherhood dwells in our flesh, would 



42 AN ESSAY 

make resistance even to violence, and that vio- 
lence will continue so long as many human be- 
ings or mankind prefer the fatherhood in the 
flesh to the Fatherhood of the souls. There may 
be a personal devil, but who can doubt that the 
flesh is not itself of the devil? This flesh will 
fight the Kingdom of God, which is in our souls, 
as long as the world lasts. It was this that put 
Jesus to death. 

Page 250. We do not agree here, for Jesus 
said that the Scriptures testified of him, there- 
fore the prophecies must also do so. Jesus un- 
doubtedly had a double nature ; we know it can 
be said that so have we — the human nature of the 
body and the spiritual nature of the soul; but in 
Jesus this last was all-powerful over the first. 
Who is it in science who has said that the re- 
production Oi human life or animal life is known 
to be possible in very low insect or worm life? 
If it is possible at all in earthly life, no matter 
how low, science cannot say that it is impossi- 
ble. We know not yet all the laws of nature, 
though we know that God is all-powerful, and, 
therefore, if life can be reproduced without the 



ON EENES't RENAn's LIFE OF JEStTS. 43 

two sexes, why doubt that so was Jesus born 
into the world ? 

Page 252. " Jesus never thought to pass him- 
self as an incarnation of God ; this idea was 
totally foreign to the Jewish mind." We say, 
yes, this was so ; but such a thing could not 
be, as God could not have anything to do with 
the flesh and blood body of this earth, which is 
Satan's. But it is a different thing that the 
strong Spirit of God had a great deal to do 
with the birth of Jesus into this world. Its 
being foreign to the Jewish mind is just the 
reason; and Renan might have seen this, which 
made it true, for Renan has shown us before, 
that this Jesus completely upset all the old 
Jewish ideas, and gave them new ones. Here 
we have a note of Renan's, which is Strauss* 
influence, and which is straining history, to dis- 
prove this ; and in another place another account, 
which contains the massacre of the innocents, and 
the arrival of the wise men at Jerusalem, at 
the time of the earthly birth of Jesus. What 
could be more true to history than the order of 
Herod to massacre the children who were of the 



44 AN ESSAY 

age which he thought was the age of the child 
who was to be " King of the Jews?" If this be 
not the true reason, history, and Renan, or 
Strauss, should have given us the true reason 
before trying to take away the Biblical one, 
which seems to us the most historical that could 
be given : and as Strauss thinks it was only chance 
which brought the wise men from the East to 
Jerusalem at that time, he should have told his- 
tory w/io the person was they had come to wor- 
ship. True history should not leave anything 
in the dark. We, therefore, believe these two 
accounts to be strictly historical. 

Pa£-e 254. Renan here takes this idea from 
the disciples of Jesus. We think it is best to 
take only the words of Jesus and think them 
out. It was because the Spirit of God was so 
strong in Jesus that he felt it was the Sonship of 
God. 

Pa£^i- 255. '' We must remember that Jesus and 
those who heard him had no idea that the laws 
of nature could mark the limit of the impos- 
sible." We say that nothing is impossible 
to God, and that here Renan is only thinking 



45 

about what we know of the laws of nature ; 
every day we are learning more and more about 
the laws of nature and they have no limit. 

Page 257. " There was for Jesus no super- 
natural, as for him there was no nature." We 
think that in these words Renan shows that 
Jesus was more than human ; if for Jesus there 
was no nature, then he was Divine. 

Page 260. '' Jesus never pretended that he 
created the world nor that he governed it ; he is 
to judge it and renew it." Here we agree ; for 
this world is Satan's, and all in it has been his, 
and all human nature with its evils was created 
by Satan. Jesus in the Spirit will judge the 
spirits of this world. 

Page 261. Renan shows how the disciples of 
Jesus, in their account in the Gospels, prove that 
Jesus acted wholly as man. This we under- 
stand to be the human nature of Jesus, for he 
was of mankind, happily for us, as otherwise 
Jesus could not be our intercessor. The Spirit is 
not flesh and blood, and it was only by dwelling 
in a flesh and blood body, and overcoming the 



46 AN ESSAY 

evils thereof, that Jesus became the Saviour of 
mankind. 

Page 264. All these things which Renan here 
speaks of worked for their day. Now we have 
more light, and b}^ that light we are bound to 
work for our da}^ clearing the way for the 
light yet to come to this earth in daj'S which are 
to come after our day. 

Page 265. "Jesus was convinced that the 
prophets wrote of him." It was Jesus Avho 
said : " Search the Scriptures, for they are they 
which testify of me ;" and to us the}^ are very 
plain, though Renan thinks that it is difficult to 
see their meaning, or their connection with the 
life of Jesus". 

Page 267. To our mind what Renan here says 
about the miracles of Jesus is a great mistake^ 
for we believe that all the miracles of Jesus were 
performed by his knowledge of laws of which 
we know nothing as yet. Prayer for help and 
faith that by knowledge the thing can be done 
give mankind power over nature, that is, power 
to use the laws of nature so as to govern or con- 
trol her. When man by study finds out new 



ON ERNEST EENAn's LIFE OF JESUS. 47 

laws, as science is doing year by year, he learns 
totally new things, so astonishing to him, that he 
should not be surprised at anything which he 
sees is wholly God's law. 

Why, then, be surprised at what is called the 
miracles of Jesus ? For by his knowledge of 
God's laws in nature, he worked what were then 
called miracles. Jesus was, as Renan says, so far 
above mankind that there never was and never 
will be another man like him. 

Page 269. Renan thinks that those who lived 
in Jesus' days on this earth thought more of his 
miracles than of his teachings and predictions, 
and that the last were profoundly Divine. Here 
Renan sees the Divine in Jesus. 

Page 270. Renan says that there was no sci- 
ence in medicine in Judea when Jesus was there ; 
that the scientific medicine founded by Greece 
was unknown to the Jews in Palestine, and that 
Jesus cured the diseases by the contact of his 
touch. This we know was so. At the same time, 
Jesus must have known even better than the 
scientists of Greece, how to cure diseases. We 
think what Renan here says is almost cowardly, 



iS AN ESSAY 

for he allows the possibility of the magnetic in- 
fiuence of a woman over a man, but tries to prove 
that a Divine influence was not in Jesus. Now, 
he has said elsewhere in his book that Jesus was 
perfect in person and charmingly winning, draw- 
ing all persons to him ; as such Jesus was, we say, 
undoubtedly full of Divine influence, and by his 
touch cured many who were sick, and brought 
back to this life many who had left it in spirit. 
Now, it seems to us that Renan wrote this, let- 
ting his French nature control him. If woman 
has this influence over men or others, she bears a 
heav}^ responsibility, and is guilty or otherwise, 
in God's sight, according as she uses her power. 
We are thankful that all human nature does not 
yield itself to this influence in woman, and that 
all women do not use it, even if they know that 
they have it. It is in human nature an imlioly in- 
fluence, and Satan uses it to the peril of our 
souls. By it, mankind fell ; by it, env}^ murders, 
thefts and all sins come; woe to those who not 
only yield to it, but encourage and promote it, 
glory in it, and who cannot realize that it is 
their shame, that they willingly place their souls, 



ON EKNEST KENAn's LIFE OF JESUS. 49 

that spark from Heaven, under the heel of their 
body of flesh, which is a descendant of animal 
life and a direct descendant from the devil, as 
science has proved. Can any woman hope that 
hersoul can live in Heaven after the death of her 
body, if she has degraded it to see good in this ter- 
rible evil, the curse which rests on mankind and 
which multiplies evil in this terrible world? They 
send down to posterity the evils and sins which 
they have fostered in their human bodies of 
flesh and blood. Jesus has shown us how we 
should use the influence within us for good to 
others and not for evil. Remember that he was 
man the same as others, and that he has told us 
that the Divine in us, which is our souls from 
Heaven, can be permitted to grow, if only we 
will it, until we conquer the flesh, which is oi 
Satan. 

Page 272. Here we have the belief that de- 
mons possessed those who were out of their 
right minds. We wish Renan could have ex- 
plained why a crazy person is no longer respon- 
sible for his actions. We ourselves think that 
whea the jnind, being connected with the soul, 



50 AN ESSAY 

is once deadened, human nature shows its origin 
— that is, it is of Satan, uncontrolled by the soul ; 
it sliows its true nature. As to hysterics in 
women, the;' are in nine cases out of ten, volun- 
tary at first, a confirmed habit afterwards, very 
disgraceful to the sex, and one which could be 
completely checked by the will of the victim. 
She who indulges in hysterics deserves no com- 
passion, or pity, or indulgence from others, as 
they are wholly under her own control — at least, 
alwa3^s so at first. This may also be said of a 
woman \vho permits herself to faint. 

Page 279. How could Renan class St. Ber- 
nard and St. Frangois d' Assise with Jesus? It is 
Renan's Roman Catholic Church training which 
has made him do this. We Protestants would 
not think of doing so. 

Page 286. These prophecies, spoken by the 
Master, were parables, and have a spiritual 
meaning. They were not taken " a la lettre " by 
Jesus, though the disciples may have done so. 
The fall of the angels, here spoken of in a note, 
was the fall of Adam and Eve, created in the 
flesh by Satan ; they were his descendants. Jesus 



ON ERNEST RENAn's LIFE OF JESUS. 51 

said he saw Satan fall from Heaven. Satan, we 
think, sinned in creating; he only created evil, 
and that evil is in the body of flesh and blood. 

Page 287. ** The time is near." This, we think, 
means the time was near when the soul of man- 
kind gained its liberty over the flesh by the 
Spirit of Jesus. 

Page 289. " Some will not die before the king- 
dom of the Son of Man comes." This, we think, 
means that they will see that the belief in Jesus 
will spread to other countries. And here Renan 
does not understand Jesus, for he judges him as 
a man alone, and forgets the Divine in him. 
Time, as spoken of here, is not our little time of 
life. 

Page 291. ** Jesus excludes marriage in the 
resurrection; the difference in sex will exist no 
more, for mankind will resemble angels." We 
think that the soul passing from the body which 
dies, may be the resurrection ; it may be also 
being born again. We see nothing strange 
in the resurrection of the body, since all things 
which die on the earth, and are buried there, live 
again in some other form ; but marriage between 



553 AN ESSAY 

the sexes, which on this earth is the cause of 
increasing sin and evil, by multiplying wicked 
mankind, will cease forever. 

Page 294. Here is a strange combination in 
Renan's thoughts. First he tells us that each one 
of us owes to Jesus what there is best in us, 
which is true ; but if Jesus was only rnan, like 
other men, how could we owe to him v/hat is 
best in us, for that best is spiritual and not carnal. 
Then Renan says that \ve must pardon Jesus his 
hope of coming again to the earth on the clouds 
of the sky, and that this dream of Jesus may 
have given him his strength against death. We 
think when Renan wrote the last of this that he 
was under the influence of Strauss. The words, 
pardon Jesus, are almost blasphemous. Are we 
to pardon the man whom we put to death ? 
What man pleaded for the life of Jesus? It is a 
different thing in these days, when we can see the 
results of the life of Jesus, to say that we would 
not have put Jesus to death, but which man 
among us would at that time have had the cour- 
age to plead for the life of Jesus ? If there is no 
man who would have done it then, we are still 



63 

of those who put Jesus to death. Who then is 
the one to pardon? Jesus or ourselves? The 
strength with which Jesus met suffering and 
death, was the strength of the Spirit of God, in 
that he was the Son of God. By conquering 
death for us, he was victor of Satan, for Satan 
created death, and our bodies of flesh, being of 
Satan, must die. But as Jesus died in the flesh 
for us, he was victor in the fight of soul against 
flesh, and so has given to our souls the life ever- 
lasting. 

Page 296. ''His Kingdom of God." The 
Kingdom of God can only be a kingdom of souls. 

Page 300. Here we return to a true under- 
standing of Jesus. *' The Socialists of our days 
will found nothing lasting until they are guided 
by the true Spirit of Jesus — the principle that to 
possess the earth, we must renounce it." 

Page 308. Renan tells us that Beelzebub was 
an ancient god of the Philistines, transformed 
by the Jews into a demon, also that Jesus said 
that every time that mankind assembles in his 
name he will be among them. This presence of 
Jesus is spiritual 



64 AN ESSAY 

Page 309. Renan mentions that Jesus spoke 
plainly when he forbade divorce. 

Page 312. Here we find that some of the dis- 
ciples left Jesus because they could not under- 
stand the spiritual in what he spoke to them. 

Page 313. In all of this is the Divine nature of 
Jesus, and it is for us to find the spiritual mean- 
ing in these words of his. 

Page 317. The Lord's Supper, which we call 
the Communion, the bread and wine, we think, 
means his human life given for us ; he is in that 
way our nourishment. It is the Christian pass- 
over ; for Jesus' sake God will pass over our sins 
in the flesh, that is, we who are Christ's. 

Page '>^\^. "The spirituality of Jesus was so 
great that the body counted for nothing." We 
think this is a strong proof that the soul within 
Jesus was direct from God, the Son of God. 

Page 321. " If your hand offend you cut it off, 
etc." This can only have a spiritual meaning. 
What sins you have, what faults you have, which 
are pleasing to you, give them up, no matter 
what it may cost you. 

Page 322. " Jesus strongly preached war 



ngainst Iniman nature." We think that Jesus 
meant tiiat if our souls prefer earthly things to 
Heavenly things we will lose the life of our 
souls, and certainlv if we cultivate pleasure and 
love for carnal things, we will be all carnal, and 
that which is carnal dies; nothing should be first 
but the life of our souls, for the soul does not die ; 
but if that which is carnal comes first we stunt 
the soul. 

Page 323. " The Son of Man will appear." 
We think this means the belief in Jesus will 
appear. 

Page 325. " If an}^ one comes to me and does 
not hate father, mother, etc." In a note Renan 
says we must remember the exaggerated style 
of Luke. We would say that the word hate is 
the only exaggerated part of this. It means that 
where your treasure is there will j^our heart be. 
Christ as the Spirit of God should be first in our 
hearts and he should be our treasure. Renan 
goes on to say that Jesus, at this time, had a dis- 
gust for the world, and that he had a grand pre- 
sentiment which threw him more and more be- 
3^ond humanity. We think this last a strong 



56 AN ESSAY 

proof of the Divine in Jesus, and we can under- 
stand his disgust for this world, for the strong, 
pure Spirit of Jesus must have been disgusted 
with the animal nature of this world. He had 
become man to save man, and he knew now the 
utter vileness of human nature. His soul was 
longing to throw off the human nature in which 
he dwelt; pure as that human body was, it was 
flesh and blood, the same as ours, and created by 
Satan. The contact alone with mankind could 
not be anything to Jesus, but " dpre et triste de 
degoM pour le inonde.'^ 

Page 326. Two anecdotes — the man who 
wished first to bury his father ; the other who 
having put his hand to the plough should not 
look back. We understand these two things to 
mean spiritual thoughts ; Jesus knew what was 
in the thoughts of these two men. The first com- 
mand was to leave the customs of the law to tiiose 
who lived under the law, and cared most for it, 
and to go and preach that God is above the law. 
The second, was not to think more of one's earthly 
possessions than of preaching the Kingdom of 
God; if one's affections returned to his earthly 



57 

possessions, he was not fit to preach the King- 
dom of God. 

Page 327. " Jesus said, ' Come to me and I will 
give you rest — ' " Which means that the burdens 
of this life will appear light, if we value this life 
less than the life to come. 

Page 329. '' Death presented itself to Jesus as 
a sacrifice, to appease the Father and save men." 
We do not here agree with Renan, for Jesus said 
that offenses must come to him. It was not to 
appease God, it was that, having taken a human 
body, Jesus knew that the human body must 
die like all human bodies, for mankind is Satan's, 
and Satan created death. 

Page 331. " The relations of Jesus at times 
thought that he was not in his right mind." This 
was because they could not understand Jesus. 
Even in these days, if anyone has an idea beyond 
the understanding of the common mind, they say 
that person is crazy. 

Page 332. ** The dislike that Jesus had to all 
opposition, carried him into acts which are inex- 
plicable and in appearance absurd." We think 
that here Renan was under the influence of 



58 AN ESSAY 

Strauss. We understand the parable of the fig- 
tree to mean that if a person, who pretends to 
be holy, and appears so to the world, when ex- 
amined by the Spirit of God, shall have no fruit 
to show that the appearance was true, that per- 
son will be withered away by the Word of God, 
which will try him. And Jesus taught his disci- 
ples to understand these things, by using earthly 
examples to impress the lesson on their minds. 
" Jesus revolted from the contact of this earth." 
We understand this, for this earth is Satan's, and 
Jesus was fighting Satan for our souls. 

Page 333. " It was time that the death of Jesus 
should come, for the situation was strained." 
Renan here forgets that Jesus knew the hour of 
his death in the human body, for he told of it to 
his disciples long before there was any positive 
sign that the people would put him to death. 

Page 340. " To know that one has for a mo- 
ment touched the ideal and to be stopped by 
others, is insupportable to an ardent soul. What 
must it have been to the founder of a new world ?" 
To acknowledge this is to acknowledge that 
Jesus was more than merely man. 



ON Urnest r:Enan^s life of jEstfs. 59 

Page 342. " Jesus would have only the religion 
of the heart; the religion of the Pharisees was 
wholly one of ceremony." How many religions 
of these days are free from ceremonies? 

Page 346. " It was a new spirit which had 
come to this world, and which caused a falling 
away of all that had gone before it." We would 
say here that Satan's children, of course, will al- 
ways fight against the Spirit of God. Jesus, as 
that Spirit, came to tell those who dwelt in bod- 
ies of flesh and blood that there was a Spirit of 
life within them, which was able to conquer the 
natural body ; that body is the child of Satan. 

Page 347. *' But it was also just that this great 
Master should in irony pay for his triumph by 
his death." We see no justice in this, that Jesus 
must die. He said that no one could put him to 
death unless it was his own will, and the will of 
God, that it should be so. Death must come to 
the human body, and Jesus died of his own free 
will. 

Page 349. " Six months were yet to pass by, 
before the end." Here Renan tells us himself 
that Jesus knew the time of his death. 



60 AN ESSAY 

Page 350. " Jesus had no idea of the world, 
and at Jerusalem his speech must have appeared 
singuLir." Renan judges so by what we call 
in these days knowledge of the world, and for- 
gets that Jesus did not need that any should tes- 
tify of man, for he knew what was in man ; there- 
fore Jesus was worldly-wise, and if in Jerusalem 
his words appeared singular, it was only because 
the Jerusalemites were incapable of understand- 
ing spiritual things, being so carnal in their 
nature. 

Page 351. This is about the widow's mite. We 
do not understand these words of Jesus to mean 
that the poor, who give little, give more than 
the rich, who give much, but that God, who sees 
into the hearts of all, who knows the motive and 
the truth of what is within our power to give, 
will judge the gift from another standpoint than 
the one from which the world judges such 
things. 

Page 352. Renan could not be more sarcastic 
to the world and to those who dwelt in Jerusa- 
lem in the day of Jesus, than to say what he 
says here. " The great moral elevation of Jesus 



61 

gave him but little advantage, what do I say? it 
created for him a sort of inferiority." Then the 
carnal animal flesh and blood bodies were in- 
capable of understanding what was grandly 
moral, and added to their ignorance the sin of 
thinking Jesus even inferior to themselves. 

Page 357. Renan does not seem to like that Jesus 
submitted to being questioned, as Matthew gives 
us in chap. 22, verse 36, and to the end of the 
chapter, and yet had Jesus not done so, we 
would not now have these answers, which are so 
very much to us. It was for our sakes, therefore, 
that Jesus submitted to answer his enemies. 

Page 359. Here we find that a man has under- 
stood the passage in the Gospels of the woman 
taken in adultery, in the same light that we see 
it. This woman was taken before Jesus when he 
was in the temple, by the men of Jerusalem, in 
the hopes that he would tell them to stone her, 
according to the law of Moses ; these men 
were determined to accuse Jesus of breaking 
that law of Moses if he did not say '* Stone the 
woman." In our book, the ** Origin of Sin," in 
the chapter on the women in the Bible, we ^\n^ 



62 AN ESSAY 

an account of what Jesus said, in the light in 
which we see it. It has always been quoted as 
only referring to the woman, when in truth it 
refers wholly to the men alone. Renan says 
this. " But the spirit which is allied to moral 
grandeur, is the one that stupid people pardon 
the least. In pronouncing the words, which 
were of such just and pure taste, 'He that is 
without sin among you, let him cast the first 
stone,' Jesus pierced the heart of hypocrisy, and 
with the same blow he signed his death- warrant.*' 

Page 363. We have here, *' Woe to you, scribes, 
Pharisees, hypocrites, for you take away the key 
of science and only use it to close the Kingdom 
of God to other men." This seems to us to be 
a proof that science belongs to religion. 

Page 367. Renan speaks of the words of Jesus, 
"Destroy this temple and I will build it up in 
three days." Christ means his liuman body, and 
it is exactly what he did. 

Page 371. "And where he (Jesus) had admin- 
istered baptism." We do not see this in the Gos- 
pels, for we read that Jesus did not baptize, only 
his disciples baptized. 



ON ERNEST RENAn's LIFE OF JESUS. 63 

Page 378. Renan here shows that it was the 
Jewish priests who put Jesus to death, and Pilate 
was forced to yield. 

Page 380. Renan says, " The unintelligible hate 
of the enemies of Jesus decided the success of 
his work and put the seal to his Divinity." Here 
Renan judges for himself. 

Page 383. Renan speaks of the presentiments 
of Jesus. Presentiments are not certainties, and 
Jesus spoke so often of his death, that he must 
have been very certain of it. 

Page 389. Here is a note speaking of St. 
John's Gospel '' as being of such an exalted tone 
that he must only have seen the Divine in Jesus, 
and not the natural weakness spoken of in the 
other Gospels." These two things we see in 
this light : Jesus was human, and also Divine in 
Spirit. 

Page 390. Renan here writes of the agony of 
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. We believe 
this to be a terrible conflict between the human 
nature of Jesus and the Spirit of God within 
him, for Jesus, for our sakes, was then in the hu- 
man body even as we are. 



64: AN ESSAY 

-Rz^' 391. •• Tne man who has sacrificed to a 
grand idea his rest." Yes: but Jesus was more 
than man. The rest of this page is verv French. 
Renan has ah-eadv told us that Jesus would 
have nothinof to do with earthly thin£:s, which 
we also see was so. Jesus could not regret this 
earthly life, since he refused to have anything to 
do with it, and his disciples could not then un- 
derstand that the Spirit within Jesus was direct 
from God. 

Pa^e 392. •■ Tnere remains only the incom- 
parable hero of the Passion, the founder of the 
rights of free conscience." This is good. Renan ; 
where, then, shall we look for true Christians? 
Among those whose consciences are tied, or 
among those whose consciences are free ? 

Pa£-^' 411. Renan here speaks of the insults 
given to Jesus before his death. We think 
that these insults given to Jesus, when in his 
human body, were given by the children of 
Satan, and that Jesus permitted them as a proof 
that our human bodies deserve these sufferings, 
being descended from Satan. The strong Spirit 



ON ERNEST RENAn's LIFE OF JESUS. 65 

of God in Jesus was then passive ; it was for this 
that Jesus had the conflict in the garden. 

Page 41 2f. This refers to Jesus before Pilate. 
We do not agree with Renan that the disciples 
could not have learned what was said ; it was 
easy, after the death of Jesus, for anyone to have 
told the disciples what was said then. 

Page 423. Renan here gives a very clear and 
just defence of Pihite, who was forced to put 
Jesus to death to please the Jewish priests. 
As Jesus himself said to Pilate : " Thou couldst 
have no power at all against me except it were 
given thee from above ; therefore, he that de- 
livered me unto thee hath the greater sin — " 
Pilate should not bear all the hate of the Chris- 
tian world. As Renan says, the King of Spain, 
to please the clergy, put to death hundreds of his 
subjects and was more to be blamed than Pilate, 
as he had more power than Pilate had at Jeru- 
salem. When the civil power persecutes to please 
the priests it shows its weakness, and Renan 
challenges the first government which is free 
from this sin, to throw the first stone at Pilate. 

Page 425, Alas ! all this is very true. We 



66 AN KS8AY 

can only think that the Christian religion was 
guilt}^ of all this because it did not realize the 
spiritual idea of what Jesus came to teach us ; 
besides, human nature is of Satan, and in it and 
from it there will always be war against the 
spiritual which we have from Christ. 

Pa^e 431. " No disciple was near Jesus in his 
last sufferings." But we are glad to know that 
many women braved the perils, and followed 
Jesus to his death. 

P<2;^^435. Here Renan shows us that if Pilate 
was forced by the Jews to put Jesus to death 
when he did not wish to do so, and when he had 
made an effort to save him, he, Pilate, took his 
revenge on the Jews by writing '* The King of the 
Jews," so that all could see that the Jews had 
crucified their King. They said that Jesus had 
called himself the King of the Jews, and for 
that reason they demanded of Pilate his death, 
though they could not prove that he had said 
these words. We are glad to see these names, 
INIary Cleophas, Mary of Magdala, Jeanne, wife 
of Khouza, Salome here, for this testifies that 
these women had t lie courage to follow Jesus to 



67 

his death. It must be the women who give the 
account of the death of Jesus, as they were eye 
witnesses, and those who wrote the account do 
but give the words of these courageous and 
faithful women. 

Page 437. " Perhaps Jesus repented that he 
died and suffered for so vile a race." Yes, we 
are truly vile, as the race by nature was and is 
the descendant of brute animal and animal is the 
descendant of Satan. Animals can only be tamed 
by being in contact with mankind in whom is 
the spark from God, and we are only tamed by 
being in contact with the Spirit of ^esus. 

Page 438. " My God ! why hast thou forsaken 
me?" We think that this was all human^ as the 
Spirit of God cannot die, for what is of God can- 
not die. Jesus in his human nature must die as 
human man, and he tells us in these words that 
to accomplish this, God, or the Spirit of God, 
then left him and he felt as man what it is to be 
without God. Jesus, for us, suffered all that 
mankind in flesh and blood must suffer when 
without the Spirit of God. Here let us give the 
words of Renan. *' Deeply united to his Father, 



68 AN ESSAY 

he commenced on the cross that Divine life which 
he was going to live in the hearts of humanity to 
endless years." 

Page 441, " Between thee and God will be no 
distinction. Clearly the vanquisher of death, 
you take possession of the Kingdom in which will 
follow thee for centuries those who adore 
thee." 

Page 446. The burial of Jesus. The women 
did what they could for Jesus and never feared 
the great dangers which they met. Mary of 
Magdala was the first witness of his resurrection. 

Page A^"^^. Alas! this is true, '' bishops have been 
princes, and the pope a king," but we think that, 
at the end, we will find that those who were 
truly of Christ were not known to history. 

Page 466. Renan says, *' Very far from Jesus 
being created by his disciples, Jesus shows him- 
self in every way superior to his disciples. These 
disciples, with the exception of St. Paul and 
perhaps John, were men without invention or 
genius. There is a great superiority in the 
Gospels over the other writings in the New 
Testament, and even the Evangelists themselves 



69 

are so far beneath him of whom they write, that 
they frequently disfigure their account, not being 
able to reach his great height. One can see, be- 
tween the lines, a beautiful original Divinity, 
spoiled by those who wrote, and who did not 
understand him, and put their own ideas for 
those of Jesus." We fully agree with Renan 
that the disciples did not wholly understand the 
Divine words of Jesus which they have given to 
us, and we think that we should take these 
Divine words of Jesus and think out their spirit- 
ual meaning. We think that Jesus designedly 
gave them to " men without invention or genius ;'' so 
that, in a certain way, they will always remain 
pure, and be given to all generations, so that 
each generation can think out their truism aided 
by the new light constantly coming into this 
world through science. 

Page 470. Here we do not agree with Renan, 
who says, " Jesus had an element of Buddhism, 
of Zoroaster, and Plato," for we think that all 
these had ancient predictions which referred 
directly to Jesus and His teachings. How is it 



70 AN ESSAY 

that Renan says this of Jesus after proving to us 
that Jesus must have been Divine ? 

Page 472. '' Christianity has been going" further 
and further away from the Jewish religion ; it will 
become perfect when it begins to return to 
Jesus." We agree with this. We are not perfect 
Christians yet, since it is possible to say that we 
have yet to come back to Jesus. Renan means 
the simplicity, purity, truth, which was in 
Jesus. 

Pages 474, 475. " Jesus is the only one who has 
made his species take the great step towards the 
Divine." Here we find that Renan thought as 
we do — that we are animals, only superior be- 
cause our egotism is more thought out. We are 
sometimes surprised that people cannot realize 
the double nature of Jesus, and yet we all have a 
double nature much less strong. Our souls live 
a life within us, and our human bodies live 
another life. If we would permit it, the life of 
our souls would control the life of our bodies to 
a much greater extent than it does now. Jesus 
had sucli a strong soul or spirit that the human 
life of his body was in complete subjection to his 



ON ERNEST RENAN^S LIFE OF JESUS. 71 

spirit, and that Spirit was direct from God, there- 
fore Divine. We are surprised here, that Renan 
should speak of anyone as being near in an}^ way 
to Jesus, for Jesus was human and divine. 



APPENDIX. 

Page dfZo. Renan says, '' Why could not other 
men have visions the same as St. Paul ?" We 
also say, that if Paul had what is called vis- 
ions — in other words, a sudden conviction in his 
mind that a thing or idea is true — wh}^ cannot 
other Christians also have the same ? For we can 
only know God through our souls, in other 
\vords, through an inward conviction. We can 
never know God through our human bodies, for 
our bodies are of Satan, and a thing in which 
there is deatJi cannot know God. Our souls do 
not die, and through them we can know God. 

Page 481. Renan thinks that John the Bap- 
tist had doubts who Jesus was, and for this 
reason sent others to question Jesus. We think 



72 AN ESSAir 

that John did this more to convince those whom 
he sent than to convince himself. 

Page 491. We do not find it so hard to under- 
stand that Jesus should tell us that we must be 
born again, for surely our souls are born after 
the death of the body. They are born again by 
leaving the body, which is born into this world 
by the birth of the body, and the soul is born 
into the next world by the death of the body. 

P^g^ 530. '' Mary of Magdcila, who, according 
to the four texts, played an important part at 
the Resurrection, is not mentioned by St. Paul as 
among those who saw Jesus." We say this is 
because Paul was not an eye witness, and also 
because he did not understand what Jesus 
thought of women. Paul was hard in every way 
on women. 

Page 532. Paul names a man as being the 
first to see Jesus after the Resurrection. Thi^ is 
because a woman was of no account to Paul, 
because she was a woman. 

P<^S^ 533- This we do not understand. Why 
should Renan tliink that Jesus did not predict 



ON ERNEST RENAN's LIFE OF JESUS. 73 

his own resurrection, when he has shown us 
that Jesus was all spiritual ? 



And now we would say this much : — First, all 
honor to Renan for giving this book to the 
world, and in it his own thoughts on the life of 
Jesus. It is a book which cannot fail to do good, 
and is given to the world at a time when such 
writings are much needed. We owe Renan 
many thanks. 

As a woman I thank him for what he says of 
his sister, and am glad that she helped him in 
writing his book and in thinking his thoughts of 
Jesus. 

To woman in general we would say, rejoice 
that no woman had a hand in putting Jesus to 
death ; but women had great courage in keeping 
with Jesus when he was led out of the city 
to die. And last, but by no means least, we find 
that no one pleaded for the life' of Jesus except 
a woman, and she was the wife of Pilate. Owing 
to her pleadings Pilate made the effort he did to 
save the life of Jesus. 

Page 441. Renan says that Jesus *' was plainly 



74r AN ESSAY 

the vanquisher of death." If Renan means this 
literally, then he believed in the resurrection of 
Jesus in the human body, and if Jesus so van- 
quished death he did so for us, and the resurrec- 
tion, in the human body of those who are Jesus' 
followers, must be a certain fact, to take place in 
a time yet to come. If Jesus vanquished death 
in relation only to our souls, then it is possible 
tliat the soul can die, and we owe the life of the 
soul to Jesus who vanquished death for us. 

END OF THE ESSAY. 

QUESTIONS. 

We would ask those who say that they are 
made in the image of God, these few questions : — 
Firsts Was the clay or dust out of which Adam 
was made in any way different from the clay or 
dust out of which horses, monkeys, cats, dogs, 
serpents, and the rest of animal life was also 
made ? If there is a difference, it is youi- duty to 
state the difference in the clay or dust of the 
ground which was used in both cases, and give 
to the world your knowledge about it. 



75 

Second, When you consider your own body — 
its needs, its functions, its shape, its want of 
power — do you have no higher idea of God than 
this ? You are made, you say, in his image. 
Does God eat, drink, sleep, walk, and do all that 
your body is obliged to do so as to live ? Can 
he see no further than you can? Does he talk, 
and smell odors, and speak as you do? Above 
all, does he think as you do ? It is not we, but 
you, who say that your body is made in the im- 
age of God. If you cease to eat and drink, can 
you live in the body? What is it that God eats 
and drinks? Can he live if he ceases to eat, and 
drink, and sleep ? It is not we, but you, who say 
that Adam was made in the image of God, the 
image being Adam's body of clay. Did Adam 
eat, and drink, and sleep before the time that 
you believe to be the time of the fall of man ? 

You have a strange idea of God, and you do 
not believe what Jesus has told you, that God is 
a Spirit. 

Can you not understand that the Bible ac- 
count of the fall of mankind. is a symbol, with 
a deeper meaning than the mere words imply? 



76 AN TLSSATi- 

The Bible teaches us in the same wa}^ as we 
teach children — by object lessons, as they are the 
best way to make a child understand and remem^ 
ber what it is taught. It was thus that Christ 
taught his disciples. The fig-tree bearing leaves 
but no fruit, and withered away, was an object 
lesson, and there are many more such in the life 
of Jesus. 

We will close our essay by saying that science 
is of God, for the reason that God is Truth, and 
all who honestly seek for truth are of God. 

We find in our study of Renan's life of Jesus 
in the French, much that is reasonable and true, 
but we also find that Renan has been forced to 
allow that Jesus, when on this earth, was more 
than merely human. He found in the life of 
Jesus much that could not be accounted for his- 
toricall}^ yet which could not be explained away. 
Above all, Renan is not ignorant of the great 
spiritual nature in Jesus, and he is obliged to 
allow that though he does not believe in the 
miraculous birth of Jesus, Jesus in his Spirit or 
Soul was not like other men.' 

Our idea of God is higher than his idea, for 



ON ERNEST RENAN'S LIFE OF JESUS. 77 

we think that what is created by God cannot 
fall or change but by natural results of the laws 
of God. Then it would not be a fall by sin, or 
a fall of any kind from what science tells us of 
natural laws. 

Therefore, God did not create us, for God 
did not create sin and evil. We differ from the 
animals only in that we have souls, and the soul 
must overcome the animal if the soul is to live 
and grow. The soul will not die, but it cannot 
grow unless it overcomes the animal. Rise, 
therefore, above the animal you dwell in, and 
make it obey you, and cease to obey it. Jesus 
came to teach us that this is possible. Flesh 
and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, 
therefore, it dies ; however, do not be deceived, 
for your soul does not die ; but unless you let it 
grow in strength and know its Maker while 
you are here, how will it know its Maker when 
it leaves the animal it now dwells in ? Emerson 
says a fence is always a challenge to a bright 
boy. We say it is also a challenge to a bright 
girl. We are fenced in by dogmas made by 
men. Let us climb the one which says that 



AN ESSAY 



flesh and blood is the image of God, and know 
that the soul alone is so. 

Our authority for what we have written is, 
much study of the Bible, much thought on what 
we read there, an inward conviction, the study 
of many religious books, and the study of some 
scientific books. 



ELECTRICITY IN MODERN LIFE, 



BY 



G. W. De TUNZELMANN. 

[79] 



ESSAY ON ELECTRICITY. 



Have we electricity in our bodies, or does it 
only pass through us ? On a cold day, if we walk 
quickly over a carpet and touch a metal, we see 
and hear and feel a spark of fire, which we say is 
electricity. We sleep in a cold room, and the 
woolen material that covers us, when touched or 
shaken, crackles with sparks which burn us. A 
woolen shawl with long woolen fleece does more 
than crackle, for in the dark it has, if we pass our 
hand over it, not only sparks but short flames of 
light which follow our fingers. If we brush our 
hair in cold weather, it stands straight up as stiff 
as wires, and cracks when turned down. On a 
cold day we are strong and can walk miles with 
ease ; we take in the oxygen from the air as we 
breathe, and we have electricity within us. 

[8iJ 



82 ESSAY ON ELECTRICITY. 

Science tells us that silk and glass rubbed with 
sealing-wax or resin, either attract or repulse 
electricity, and that a flannel object retains elec- 
tricity and will attract and repel. Wax is from 
a bee, a live bee ; resin is from a tree ; silk from 
the silk worm ; all these must be alive to make 
the wax, the resin, the silk. Science tells us that 
electrifying a body adds a certain something to 
it, and that electrifying it negatively takes the 
same amount of that something from it. Science 
also says that we know absolutely nothing of 
what electricity really is, yet we say that when 
electricity takes place, something occurs like the 
transference of an incompressible liquid from 
one place to another. Science also says that if 
the electrical machine is to continue to give a 
supply of electricity, its rubber must be in con- 
nection with earth. It is also not determined 
about the direction or the flow, and we are 
totally ignorant of the velocity of flow. 

We would ask what metals are in the earth. 
Electricity, we are told, is made of solutions of 
potash, sulphuric acid, zinc, carbon, and also 



ESSAY ON ELECTRICITT. 83 

iron wire. We are told that if enough electric- 
ity is used, heat is developed. 

Electricity is life, but not our bodily life, 
though we live by it as we also live by oxygen ; 
not only mankind, but everything in which 
there is life, on the earth, also lives b}' it. Too 
much of either will kill the life of our bodies, but 
not the true life within us, which is the life of 
our souls. It is not everyone that can live on 
high mountains; the air is too rarefied for some 
lungs ; powerful electricity is deadly to our 
bodies, but God's agent is electricity ; by it work 
the sun, the earth, the planets, the stars, earth- 
quakes, cyclones, storms ; by it lives everything 
that is made of earth ; everything that touches 
or grows on this earth ; everything that owes its 
birth to the laws of this earth. 

Our souls are electricity, such is their life, 
such is the nature of God. No one in the flesh 
can see God and live, the flesh would die by an 
electric flash, the same as by a lightning flash 
when it strikes. If we get the electricity which 
is in us from the earth it is because' we are made 
of earth, and because the same metals \vhich are 



84: ESSAY ON ELECTRICITY. 

in the earth are in us and connect us by electric- 
ity to the earth. Our bones are composed of min- 
erals and phosphate of lime ; in our bodies we 
have common salt and iron, also sulphur, potash, 
carbon and soda, and phosphorus in the brain 
tissue. All these we get from the earth in 
various wa3'S. All these minerals are used in 
medicines to restore our bodies to health. 
Now, if phosphate comes from volcanic rocks of 
the earth, and, deca3ang, passes into the soil, 
from thence to plants, wheat, corn and oats, 
and if animals, eating these things, get phosphate 
in their systems, and if mankind eating both 
animals, wheat, corn and oats, also get this phos- 
phate, which, we are told, is a faint light without 
heat, and if phosphate makes the brain tissue, 
then phosphate is, we say, part of electricity. 
Electricity, which can give great light, is the 
life of this world, the life of all in the world, and 
the life of our souls. Our souls, which are onl}^ 
connected with our brains, are light, and this 
light was strong in Jesus ; by being so, he was 
the Light of this world, light to our minds and 
souls. Having in us the metals which are in the 



Essay on eleoteicity. 85 

earth, we are so connected with the earth from 
which we spring, that we are drawn by electric- 
ity to it, and our bodies in the flesh return to 
the earth. *' Dust thou art and to dust thou 
shalt return." Genesis 3 : 19. 

Electricity draws us and all things to the 
earth, it is the magnet called gravitation. 
Oxygen gives us life ; of a very cold, dry day, 
when the air is full of oxygen, so are we full of 
it, and also full of electricity and strength ; we 
can walk, run, almost fly, with beautiful health 
rushing through our bodies of clay. Great 
oxygen and electricity are the life of our souls. 
The electricity which attracts or repels in wax, 
resin, silk and wool, all comes from the earth ; 
it comes through the life of the bee, the tree 
and the silkworm ; it lives on the sheep and the 
grass which the sheep live on. The electricity 
made by the minerals taken from the earth also 
comes from the life in the earth, and the life of 
this earth is electricity. 

The certain something which science cannot 
explain, but which it tells us electricity adds to 
a thing, is simply the substance which makes 



86 ESSAY ON ELKOTBICITY. 

intensity of life, such as our souls are made of. 
Jr. is such intense life that it can move inanimate 
objects, as science shows, but it passes off when 
electrified negatively, because, where it does 
not find life it cannot remain; it is, as science 
says, like an incompressible liquid, and we know 
nothing of the direction or velocity of the flow. 
No, we cannot, for we know not now the direc- 
tion or the velocity of the flow of the true 
life, the life of our souls. Electricity certainly 
comes from the earth, through all things which 
have any amount of life, or the least amount of 
life ; it is life, but a life of which we can hold 
but a small amount. We and the earth cannot 
live without heat, and electricity gives heat. 
The lodestone is made of iron metal and gas 
oxygen. If we have the same metal in us, and 
w^e know we have oxygen, then, as the earth is 
full of this mineral, we are attached to it by its 
large lodestones ; all on the earth are so attached, 
drawn down by the earth. Science tells us that 
magnetism will change a body or thing magne- 
tized. The cures which Jesus made were done 



Essay on electricity. 87 

by magnetism, or, rather, electricity, but we will 
speak of them further on. 

Science tells us that the current of magnets 
will flow round like the hands of a watch. We 
believe, then, that electricity flows round the 
earth or the earth revolves on its axis by elec- 
tricity. Electricity, then, is the life in the world 
and the heavens. Science tells us that when 
work is done upon a body by electricity, that 
the body is afterwards capable of doing the 
same amount of work which has been done on 
it. We read in a Book — which we insist has as 
much right to be believed as any historical book 
— written years ago, that when the leper said to 
Jesus, " If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean," 
Jesus put forth his hand and touched him, say- 
ing, " I will, be thou clean," and the leper was 
cleansed. 

When Jesus was in Peter's house he saw his 
wife's mother sick of a fever, and he touched her 
hand and the fever left her. Now we also say, 
that as Jesus cured b}^ electricity, he gave the 
electricity to the body and it did the work of 
curing the bod3\ As Jesus was the perfection of 



S3 ESSAY ON ELECTRICITY. 

manhood, and had all the knowledge of the 
natural powers of this earth, he had them at his 
command. Therefore, at his command, electric- 
ity worked, as we do know now, though but 
faintly. He also cured without a touch of his 
hand, but by the touch of electricity, that in- 
compressible liquid, as science calls it. Jesus 
cured the centurion's servant at Capernaum. 
The centurion tells us that he understands the 
power of Jesus over nature, for he says, " Speak 
the word only and my servant shall be healed, 
because I am under authority," — that is, I have 
authority and so hast thou. '' I have soldiers 
under me " — so had Jesus powers like electricity 
which he could work and command as soldiers. 
*' Go, come, and do this," and the centurion adds, 
" he doeth it." 

In the same way Jesus brought the calm to the 
waves which arose by a tempest. Science tells 
us that electricity attracts and repels according 
to the flow of the current. Electricity is life, not 
the life in us, but the life of this world. We be- 
lieve Jesus to be man in his human body such as 
we arc, but so far above mankind that in him 



ESSAY ON ELECTRICITY. 89 

could dwell all this knowledge which was given 
to him by God, given to him to show us the way 
back to God as we knew it not ourselves. Jesus 
has told us that we ourselves can do as he did, 
had we the faith to gain the knowledge from 
God, by our minds and souls. 

The energy derived from the sun is electric- 
ity, and it gives its intense light and heat the 
same way as our small electricity. Our earth 
is filled with electricity, and the earth and the 
sun repel and attract each other. We have 
been studying '* Electricity in Modern Life," by 
G. W. de Tunzelmann. He says that in the 
Middle Ages the magnet was used as a power to 
cure all ills. We wish to say that we do not 
mean that such is the way that Jesus cured the 
sick; we mean that the electricity passed from 
Jesus himself, or through him into the person or 
thing which was corrected or made straight by 
the electricity. Also we read in the same book 
that " the first suggestion of an electric tele- 
graph was made in an anonymous letter pub- 
lished in a magazine, signed with the letters ' C. 
M.,* and that the author's reason for concealing 



90 ESSAY ON ELECTRICITY. 

his identity was the fear of being regarded as a 
magician by his neighbors." As this was in 
1753, we think it may have been a woman. 
The fear of giving her full name we can well 
understand, for a woman had many things to 
fear in giving any thought whatever to the 
world then. 

We also see in this fact that the power of 
working new and strange things, which rests in 
electricity, is like magic, and magic means 
sorcery to those who do not understand the 
power of electricity. The cures of Jesus were 
in those days attributed to magic or sorcery by 
those who were his enemies (Matthew 12: 24) — 
" But when the Pharisees heard it they said, this 
fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelze- 
bub, the prince of the devils." In our study 
we also read, " The electrical phenomena pre- 
sented by the tissues of the living animal body, 
obscure as the subject is, deserve a brief men- 
tion, especially as electricity is now so largely 
used in the treatment of various diseased con- 
ditions." We would say that to Jesus these 
things were not obscure ; he knew the animal 



ESSAY ON ELEOTRIOITY. 91 

body, and saw and knew how to use electricity 
in the cures which he made. Electricity being 
in us, and in all things, he could connect the 
great flow of it, which passed through his body, 
to the flow in the patient's body, just enough to 
cure and less than would kill. 

We have in " Electricity in Modern Life " an 
account of the phonograph, and how wax is 
used in making it. We have always thought 
that this explains how what we hear when very 
young, returns to us in after years. We speak 
to a child, it hears with its ears, in which is some 
wax ; the brain receives what the ears hear, and 
in after years or old age the brain repeats the 
first impressions which were made by the wax 
on the brain. We should be careful, then, how 
we instruct very young children. 

To explain how light is made by electricity, 
we refer you to the book we have studied. But 
we have something more to say from the very 
old Book which we have also studied. When 
Moses, with the message which God had given 
him, came down from the high mountain where 
he had been for some time, in air full of oxygen, 



92 ilSSAY ON ELECTRICITY. 

which is life and electricity, which is ligJit, the 
face of Moses shone so that Aaron and all the 
Children of Israel were afraid to come nigh him, 
and Moses had to wear a veil over his face, until 
that light faded away. Exodus 34. 

So also we understand the Transfiguration of 
Jesus, ** And his face did shine as the sun, and 
his raiment was white as the light." Jesus was 
on a high mountain in ox3'gen and electricity 
from God. Jesus was in contact with the souls 
of Moses and Elias, souls of oxygen, stro7ig life, 
and electricity, strong white light — the life and 
light from God which, in its strength, would kill 
our bodies of flesh in a moment. The bright 
cloud from which the voice came saying, ''This 
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased ; 
hear ye him," and which w\as so bright, that the 
disciples fell on their faces and were sore afraid, 
was also electricity and conveyed the sound of 
the words to the disciples. We have taken 
these accounts from Matthew, since Renan and 
Strauss say that they consider the book of 
Matthew^ the most reliable. 

We must here say that our bodies, made o£ 



ESSAY ON ELECTRICITY. 93 

clay and of earthly metals, are from the earth, 
and that in the temptation given in Matthew, the 
devil said to Jesus, when he showed him the 
kingdoms and glories of this world, " All these 
things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and 
worship me." They were things which were 
then in the power of the devil to give, and they 
were things of this earth. We, then, in the flesh 
are all evil and sin ; our souls alone have light. 
The flesh is of the earth ; the soul is electricity 
or light. Jesus was on a high mountain ; by 
electricity he saw the glory of the world. 



CHRISTIANITY 
AND ROMAN PAGANISM, 

BY 

PROFESSOR ST. GEORGE MIVART, 

IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 

November, 1893. 

[95] 



CHRISTIANITY AND ROMAN 
PAGANISM. 



Having read the above, we here present our 
view of it. Mr. Mivart tells us that the purpose 
of this article is not to define the essence of 
Christianity, but to note certain characteristics 
which history shows us, by contrast, to have 
pertained to the essence of that religion. It is 
history again that is presented to us here. 

We find that pagan religions were aids to the 
Christian church, to the church and not to the 
religion, and we find it very difficult to under- 
stand why Christian is added to it. The Romans 
were a people who, in spite of their bravery, 
were more given to fear than to hope. We find 
that the Roman Church in these days rules its 

[97] 



98 ESSAY ON MI V ART. 

people more hy fear than by hope, and also that 
they are taught to dread the God they worship. 

Mivart tells us that the Romans had a god 
called Vaticanus, who caused the new-born infant 
to emit its first cry. This, he says, is a matter-of- 
fact god. Certainly it is a matter of fact that 
the new-born infant does give a first cry, and we 
consider this cry to be caused by its first breath, 
which is the spark from God, or the soul of the 
infant, whose body is of animal descent born into 
this world of Satan. The cry is the cry of the 
soul sent to fight its battle against sin, the world, 
and the devil, by overcoming the body of sin in 
which it first sees the darkness of this earth. 

jNIivart tells us that Romanists had not that ten- 
dency to humanize their gods, which prevailed 
in Greece. If they had not — which statement we 
do not dispute, as we accept the history that 
Mivart here gives us — wh}^ we ask, do tlic mod- 
ern Romans make human beings gods after their 
death ? We refer to the saints in the Roman 
Catholic churches. No one who has lived in 
Italy or Rome can deny that some years back the 
common, ignorant people of that church wor- 



ESSAY ON MIVAET. 99 

shipped the statues and pictures of the saints, as 
if they were living human gods. 

We understand the Greeks to have human- 
ized their gods, because when the descendants of 
animals changed in their outward forms of flesh 
and blood, and their souls began to awake to con- 
sciousness, they felt the need of a god to wor- 
ship, a god like unto their souls. Before Christ 
came to tell them of the God of their souls, they 
made gods for the needs of their bodies. The 
man who loved wine made a god of Bacchus, 
god of wine. They had a god of carnal love, 
Cupid ; a goddess of beauty, Venus ; a being 
or god of heaven, Jupiter; a queen, Juno; 
a god of rivers, Alpheios ; a god of trees. 
Dryads ; a god of fire, Vulcan ; a god of the 
seas, Neptune ; a goddess of the chase, Diana ; 
and a great many others, all referring to the 
needs of the body. We will here mention that 
'Minerva, goddess of wisdom, said to have been 
born from the brain of Jupiter, the king of 
heaven, was a goddess, not a god. They under- 
stood that wisdom comes from the brain, and 
that wisdom itself is of God. 



100 EBSAY ON MIVART. 

Mivart tells us that this religion of Rome, so 
powerful, was incorporated with the state. We 
say so has the Roman Catholic Church religion 
been for many years, until, like all things run to 
evil for selfish motives, it is on the wane. 

The religion of the pagan consisted in external 
worship, which had to be carried out with pre- 
cision, with proper attitudes, due offerings and 
correct formulae; these worshippers of the gods 
had two priests beside them when they prayed. 
All these pagan customs with their exact mean- 
ings are, at this day, adopted into the Roman 
Church, and are not, to our mind. Christian, that 
is, according to the teachings of Christ. We find 
in one of the parables of Jesus that the Pharisee 
prayed thus within himself, *' God, 1 thank thee, 
that I am not as other men are ; I fast twice in 
the week, I give tithes of all I possess." This 
precision was not praised by Jesus, as proper 
attitudes, due offerings and external acts, may 
be proper discipline, but are of no value to the 
soul. 

The pagans had no dogmas ; men's thoughts 
and beliefs were free, and only external acts 



JESSAY ON MIVART. lOl 

were demanded of them ; of the priests or pon- 
tiffs, neither their morals nor beh'efs were taken 
into account. So it is in the Roman Church 
now, thousfh it has dog^mas ; the external acts of 
the dogmas are considered sufficient ; what the 
man thinks or believes in his soul, and what his 
private morals ma}' be, are not taken into account. 
This is not Christian, for Christ taught, " If 3n)u 
do your alms to be seen of men, you have no 
reward of 3'our Father in Heaven ; if 3'ou make 
them known, you are as the hypocrites ; and 
when you pray, do not be as the hypocrites; 
they stand in the synagogues and in the corners 
of the streets to be seen of men; and when you 
pray use not vain repetitions ; and the hypocrites 
are like sepulchres beautiful without, but with- 
in full of all uncleanness." Jesus taught just the 
reverse of all these pagan teachings adopted 
into the Roman Church. These outward forms, 
he told us, were nothing in God's sight. The 
inward soul, the mind, the thought, the private 
life, morals, sincere love to God, these w^ere the 
things which make true religion. 

Mivart speaks of the widely diffused feeling, 



102 ESSAY ON MIVAET. 

tlien existin^^; that a time of crisis had arrived, 
and that philosophers were preparing the way 
for Christianity by evolving from the old pagan 
world ideas and sentiments which facilitated its 
reception. We say that this is true of the 
Roman Catholic Church since it has kept so 
many pagan customs ; but it is not true of the 
religion of Christ. All these pagan things he 
destroyed in declaring the life of the soul, and 
the impossibility of these earthly things hav- 
ing a saving effect upon it. The easy conquest 
that the Roman Church made of the poor, the 
despised, the ill-treated, the unhappy, was only 
because it kept them all in gross ignorance and 
superstition. Christ came to give these very 
same unhappy people a knowledge of what is 
true, and thereby to make them free. Ignorance 
and superstition are slavery, and by keeping the 
masses of the people in gross ignorance the 
Roman Church has treated them as slaves ; 
she knows the value of forced ignorance, and as 
her leaders are by no means ignorant themselves, 
and know full well what they are doing, they 
will be judged accordingly. All usurped earthly 



ESSAY ON MIVARl*. 103 

powers used for evil, sooner or later come to 
their end. Mivart says that the emancipation ol 
women was accomplished before the Christian 
religion. We know this, but we also know that 
the Roman Catholic religion, which took the 
teachings of Paul, instead of the teachings of 
Christ, did away with the emancipation of 
women, and threw a yoke on them, more bitter 
to bear, and more unjust, than any pagan yoke. 
It ignored all that Christ taught on the subject 
of women, and for this act, we pronounce the 
Roman Catholic Church, unchristian. It has 
very little of the pure religion of Christ. 

Mivart tells us that the pagan world believed 
that each state had a supernatural patron. The 
Roman religion has patron saints ; we see noth- 
ing of the kind in the religion of Christ. Mivart 
also tells us how processions wound their way 
through the streets of pagan Rome ; so the}- do 
now in the streets of Roman Catholic Rome. 
He tells us of the pardons granted in return for 
ceremonial observances ; we find that the Rome, 
which says she is Christ's, does the same thing 
now ; she grants spiritual pardons for money 



104 ESSAY ON MIVAKT. 

paid to her priests. Trembling sinners in pagan 
Rome practiced fastings and sacrifices to disarm 
Divine justice ; so they still do in the Roman 
Church, not understanding that their sufferings 
are the natural results of their sins, their ignor- 
ance and superstitions, which places them in the 
power of evil. 

Mivartsays, '* To-day the Roman Church dif- 
fers from all other religious bodies by these 
marks : (i) catholicity and (2) authority. There 
is not one other religious body which dares to 
affirm that it alone is catholic; and that it alone 
possesses absolute dogmatic authority." This, 
we say, is the declaration of a Roman Catholic. 

First, as to other churches of Christ daring to 
affirm that they alone have absolute authority, 
they are too much of Christ, to do anj^thing of 
the kind; to God they give absolute authority 
as expressed through Christ. If the Roman 
Church dare affirm that it alone possesses 
absolute dogmatic authority, it may so affirm it; 
but we do not admit it. Their declaring this by 
no means makes it so. Their pagan church is 
not Christ's church. They declare themselves 



K8SAT ON MITAltT.*'' 105 

to be the woman arra3'ed in purple and scarlet 
in St. John's Revelations. " The woman he saw 
drunken with the blood of the saints and 
martyrs of Jesus. The seven heads are the seven 
mountains on which the woman sitteth ; These 
shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb 
shall overcome them, for he is Lord of lords, 
and King: of kinsfs. And the woman is that 
great city, which reigneth over the kings of 
the earth." 

When we look into histor}^ which Mivart has 
forgotten to do, we find in what wa}' the Roman 
Catholic dogmas possessed absolute authority, and 
we pray that God in the judgment may have 
mercy upon them. The Inquisition will rise up 
in condemnation against them for the blood 
shed, the cruel horrors practiced to gain this 
false authority, the falsehoods they taught, the 
ignorance they forced on mankind, the morals 
of the wicked leaders of their dogmas, their 
ignorance of the spiritual teachings of Christ, 
the earthly kingdom they held, which was of 
the earth's, and Satan's, for Christ declared that 
his kingdom was riot of this earth. The Roman 



106 ESSAY ON >nTART. 

Church took the earthly king-doms which Christ 
refused when Satan told him that they were his 
— Satan's. And if the Roman Church has them, 
it can onl}' have them from Satan, and they 
glory in this shame. As to their being alone 
catholic, we deny this altogether, for catholic 
means universal, and the Roman Church is not 
universal. 

We also find in reading what Mr. Mivart here 
says, that St. Paul made the Roman Catholic 
Church. We say that he did not make it as it 
now stands, because so much is added to the 
beliefs of that Church by ^\q\-\ Pope, during his 
lifetime, that St. Paul would hardly recognize it 
in these days. Though we allow that there is 
much that is good in St. Paul's writings, we 
take our view of the life of Christ and his teach- 
ings direct from the words of Jesus; and the 
essence of the religion of Christ, we do not find 
in the Roman Catholic Church, and very little 
of the true essence in St. Paul's writings. Christ 
was spiritual, and all his teachings are directly 
against dogmas. That men should put faith in 
the saving of their souiS by the use of earthly 



ESSAY ON MIVART. 107] 

customs and dogmas, was what Christ wished to' 
overthrow. The authority that the Church of; 
Rome claims is self-made authority, and being; 
man-made, it will die out of itself. The reasoni 
that the Christian Church in Rome adopted so| 
much that is pagan is because mankind is so in-| 
clined to worship idols ; they seem not to under-] 
stand that their souls are spirit, and not carnal: 
as their bodies. We find that the Roman; 
Church has completely lost the simplicity of^ 
Christ. ; 

We would here add that they who are Christ's! 
are in all churches and of all religions on this^ 
earth ; they are mixed up with the tares which] 
are in all religions, and we shall only know themi 
and their numbers, when at the end the tares are^ 
separated from the good seed. i 



ESSAY ON THE "LIFE OF JESUS." 



BY 



DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS. 

[109] 



ESSAY ON STRAUSS' LIFE OF 
JESUS. 



In his dedication Strauss says, " In dedicating 
this book to my brother I consider him a repre- 
sentative of the people. I may add that he has 
the still rarer capacity of seeing that there is no 
security in Germany, at least for political liberty 
and progress, until the public mind has been 
emancipated from superstition and initiated in a 
purely human culture." We say that human is 
animal ; if the people study only that part of 
themselves, they will become only animal, and, 
with uncontrolled animal natures, they will 
quickly become as cruel as untamed animals. 
Expecting no hereafter, they will die as animals. 
They will live as animals, only for themselves, 
tearing down and devouring one another, hating 
one another, and quickly destroying the best of 

[III] 



112 ESSAY ON STKAUSS' LIFE OF JE8U8. 

human life. They will live in forests and waste 
places, and the best will die out at last. 

It was the people whom Christ loved ; he was 
always with the people ; it was the people whom 
he taught; he thought them capable of under- 
standing his spiritual teachings ; it was the 
people whom he cured of foul diseases. 

Those whom he cured,, the blind and lame, 
and w^hom he brought back to life, were from 
the people. He answered the questions of the 
people when he refused to answer the wise of 
those days. He had nothing to do with the 
proud and learned. He lived with the people, 
he prayed for the people, he suffered and died 
for the people. Why, then, does Strauss try to 
make the people disbelieve in Jesus ? Because 
the Roman Catholic Church, and perhaps other 
churches also, have invented superstitious stories 
so as to control the ignorant. In so doing the 
churches have lost the simple and pure truth of 
the life and teaching of Jesus, who, in his Spirit, 
was the Son of God. If the people follow Jesus 
here, they will be with him hereafter in the life 
eternal of their souls. We consider Strauss in- 



113 

competent to judge of the truth of the Gospels, 
because his hatred of the dogmas of the Roman 
Catholic Church, which he cannot separate from 
the truth of the life of Jesus, has made him show 
malice towards Jesus. He carries this feeling- so 
far in his writings that we discredit almost every 
word that he has written in his " Life of Jesus." 
We consider the book an unfair judgment of the 
Gospels, which he has studied as history, and 
which are not history, but a biography of the life 
of Jesus, who, in his lifetime here, refused to 
have anything to do with the history of this 
earth. Jesus was spiritual, and his teachings 
were spiritual. He told us of our souls, and if 
there was any history in his teachings, it was 
the history of the soul. 

We now come to Strauss* preface to his new 
life of Jesus. Having read his first book on the 
life of Jesus, we read this preface with surprise, 
and even with some relief. The first book of the 
life of Jesus seemed to our mind to have but one 
object, the destruction of the Christian religion. 
Strauss tried to prove historically that all that 
we believe to be true in the life of Jesus, had no 



114 ESSAT ON STRAUSs' LIFE OF JESCS. 

truth in it at all. If this should be universally 
believed, this earth would become what hell is 
generally believed to be, and any man trving to 
bring this state of things about, cannot expect 
that we should either thank or love him. 

We are neither French nor German ; we be- 
long to a free country. We think Renan's life of 
Jesus more noble than Strauss' life of Jesus, sim- 
ply because Renan's book shows clearly that his 
soul loved the Spirit of God in Jesus, and Strauss' 
book shows almost hatred of Jesus. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Strauss here says, '* Struggles between the 
senses and the reason, between selfish and gen- 
eral aims, are incidental to every human life, and, 
although the disturbance arising from this in- 
ward warfare may vary infinitel>- in degree, 
from the wildest tumult of the passions to the 
insignificant interruption of their repose, still its 
absolute exclusion, as supposed in the church 
doctrine, as to the sinlessness of Christ, must be 
fatal to any true conception of humanity." We 



115 

would answer Strauss in these words : — To be 
sinless means, in Jesus, that in the flesh he did 
not yield to sin, and that, having overcome it 
once, it never overcame him. Your own argu- 
ment about degrees is against what you wish to 
prove, for all nature, or humanity, as you call it, 
is the same. If there are degrees you will have 
to allow that the humanity of Jesus, when he had 
conquered it in the temptation which he suffered, 
was, after the temptation, sinless. It is St. Paul 
who says, " For he (God) hath made him to be 
sin for us, who knew no sin ; that we might be 
made the righteousness of God in him." Also, 
*' For we have not an High Priest which cannot be 
touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but 
was in all points tempted like as we are, yet 
without sin." Now, we take the liberty of differ- 
ing from St. Paul ; he understood the Christian 
religion as he was capable of understanding it. 
We have the Gospels, which must give us our 
knowledge of the life and teachings of Christ, 
the same as Paul received his knowledge from 
the Gospels, written or told to him by the apos- 
tles. We have a right to search for the truth in 



116 ESSAY ON STRAUSs' LIFE OF JFSUS. 

the Gospels. We find there that all are born in 
sin; mankind is born in sin. 

We sa}' that God did not make Jesus to be sin 
for us. Sin is not of God, but of Satan. God 
has nothing to do with sin, but to condemn it and 
refuse it. He never made a person or a thing to 
be sin. Jesus came to dwell in a human body sucii 
as we dwell in, a body of flesh and blood, whose 
nature is sin. That Jesus " knew no sin," means 
that he committed none, for Jesus knew what it 
was, as he came to condemn it, and as he tells us 
what it is, and how to overcome it. We can- 
not be made the " righteousness of God," for how^ 
can sin ever become the righteousness of God? 
St. Paul here makes human nature equal to God, 
which we never can be, even when we drop this 
body and live in our soul life. St. Paul would 
have us believe that the means of our being equal 
to God is sin, and sin m.ade by God. No, we do 
not agree in this with St. Paul. 

Then St. Paul, after telling us this, savs that 
our High Priest can be touched with our infirm- 
ities, as he was in all points tempted as we are. 
This contradicts the first statement, for he says 



117 

here, that Jesus had our infirmities, and was 
tempted as we are, and he adds, " yet without 
sin." He means, we suppose, zvithoiit sinning ; 
for to be without sin means not knowing what 
sin is, and unless Jesus knew in the flesh and 
blood body, in which he dwelt here, what sin 
is, he could not be the " daysman " which Job 
longed for, "to be betwixt us ; that might lay 
his hand upon us both." Job 9: 33. Jesus was, 
and is, the " daysman," to lay his hand upon us 
and upon God. That is, he connects us with 
God ; being man in his body, such as we all are, 
and being the Son of God, in his soul or spirit, 
he was fit in spirit to approach us in our soul or 
spirit, with God. 

Strauss says this : *' Thus the discordant ele- 
ments, human and Divine, the matter and the 
mode of treatment, became virtually decom- 
posed, betraying their intrinsic disharmony in 
the vain effort to unite them." Strauss cannot 
understand that we have Divine within us, which 
is our soul, and that we also have human. We 
know only too well that human and Divine are 
discordant; they war one against the other. 



118 

Strauss says : " The watchword of modern times 
is to regard everything as alien or irrelevant 
which is not natural and human." Who is to 
decide what natural and human trul}'' mean ? 
Does natural mean the nature of beasts? Does 
human mean the sentiments of the heart? 
Strauss also says that the life of Christ 
should be related in these modern times in the 
same manner as that of other illustrious men. 
We say that in all history there is no man whose 
life can in any way be compared with the life of 
Jesus, which was the only spiritual life ever 
lived on this earth. Strauss should name these 
illustrious men whom he has found in history ; 
otherwise, according to his theory, we cannot 
believe him. 

Strauss begins by caviling at the star. Are 
we not finding new stars even now ? Why 
stumble at the account of the star? Stiauss 
says that Satan tempted Jesus to see if he were 
really the Son of God, and that Satan must have 
known before this that he was or was not the 
Son of God. We say that Satan, being sin, 
could not know tliat Jesus was the Son of God 



fiSSAY ON STKAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 119 

until after the temptation, which, ahnost word 
for word, proves that the temptation was for no 
other reason than to find out if Jesus was the 
Son of God, for the temptations were all of the 
kind to which mankind yields. 

Strauss gives us some extracts, of what he calls 
various forms of the attempt to write a life of 
Jesus. He begins with Hess. Then we find this 
quotation from Herder : " Must the laws of 
nature have been arrested in order to convince 
us now of the intrinsic truth, beauty and neces- 
sity of Christ's moral kingdom ? Let us rather 
thank God that this kingdom exists, and instead 
of brooding over miracles, try to comprehend its 
true nature ; its nature itself must be its evidence 
to our minds, else all the miracles and prophecies 
ever wrought or accomplished are for us unsaid, 
unwrought, unprofitable." We add, this is 
good. Herder also sa3^s : " Why did not the 
revived Jesus show himself to his enemies as 
well as to his friends ? Nameh^, that he did not 
wish to be seized, bound, ill-treated and cruci- 
fied a second time." Strauss says this shows a 
conception of the resurrection very different 



from that of the church and of the Gospels. We 
sa}- that the time had not come for Jesus to show 
himself to his enemies; it is still to come. 

From Paulus Strauss gives us this : " The 
accounts deemed miraculous are really not so 
when candidly considered ; the marvel is not 
really in the text, but is only an interpolation of 
the interpreter, that Jesus did not walk on the 
sea, but on a bank above the water level." We 
say that if a sinful man knows how to tread 
water, that Jesus, who knew all things, knew 
how to walk upon the water. Then further, ** So 
in the story of feeding the five thousand, the 
Evangelists say nothing of how it was done." 
We say that this was because they did not know 
how it was done ; but it was done, as Jesus him- 
self refers to feeding the five thousand with a 
few loaves, when he reproves the want of faith 
in his disciples. *' The Evangelists say nothing of 
the astonishment which would be excited by so 
wonderful a multiplication of the food." This is 
the value of the accounts given of Jesus by his 
disciples; they give the facts, without comment. 
We can now study the facts with our present 



121 

knowledge, which we could not have done had 
the disciples given their interpretation ; those 
to come after us, generation by generation, will 
be able to do the same with the light of their 
knowledge. 

*' When we read that an angel by the name of 
Gabriel visited Mary to announce to her the 
maternity of the Messiah, we are easily induced 
to reject the whole story as fabulous." Angels 
are spoken of very often in the Bible, and they 
exist whether they appear to us or no. 

" If miracles are incompatible with history, 
then the Gospels are not really historical 
records." Nor are they, for what relates to the 
soul cannot be historical. Then speaking of 
Schleiermacher, Strauss says that he saw, quite 
as clearly and decidedly as either Herder or 
Paulus, the impossibility of miracles, and the 
undeviating constancy of the laws of nature. 
We sa}^ that the laws of nature are not yet fully 
understood, nor are they constant; if they are 
constant why are children born deformed? 
Strauss says that deformities are freaks of 
nature, yet he is just now telling us that nature 



122 

can have no freaks. We say that a product of 
the life of Jesus, satisfying at once the demands 
of faith and those of science, can be given. 

Strauss says that for ever3^one who concerns 
himself with the life of Jesus, there is the neces- 
sity of coming to a clear understanding about 
the miracles. We say the so-called miracles of 
Jesus were no miracles, as he knew the laws by 
which they worked, and he himself called them 
signs ; they were miracles to those who witnessed 
them, as they could not understand the laws by 
which Jesus, in his Divine nature, performed 
them. On pages 24 and 25 in Strauss' book, we 
find what is said of the life of Jesus so small, 
that we think he has gone out of the way to 
prove his hatred of Jesus, and we ask what has 
Jesus done that he hates him to this extent? 
We say that the science of the future will prove 
that faitli and science are one. 

Strauss says that Hase calls his manual an 
essay towards a really scientific life of Jesus, and 
that he inconsequence writes hardly against him. 
We say that, so far, it seems to us that Strouss 
writes in anger against all who do not agree 



123 

with him, in his hatred of Jesus, and that he 
takes a vast amount of trouble to try to prove 
that the Gospels are false. Well, if he prove it, 
which he has not done, what does he wish to 
accomplish? 

We agree in part with Hase when he says: 
"The miraculous endowment of Jesus was a 
clear dominion of the Spirit over nature, origin- 
ally conferred upon man at his creation, and 
regaining its original force through the sinless 
purity of Jesus, to quell sickness and death ; so 
that there is here no interruption of nature's 
laws, but onl}' a restoration of her pristine har- 
mony and order." We would add to this that 
it was conferred on man when he received his 
soul or spirit, not his human body ; and that it 
is we who interrupt the laws of nature, by break- 
ing them, or forcing them, and so destroying 
them. In so doing we make diseases of all 
kinds, and sin and sorrow besides. Strauss 
objects to Hase's using the \n or d providence. He 
says he should use the word accident. Now, if 
everything in the life of Jesus was an accident, 
which is what Strauss says, Strauss should 



124 ESSAY ON STRAUSs' LIFE OF JESUS. 

explain to us what an accident really is, its cause 
and its effect. It seems to us that to say a thing 
is an accident, means that it is a thing done 
through our own ignorance or neglect ; it is 
never the effect which we mean the cause to 
have ; it is unlooked for in our actions ; we can- 
not explain it before it takes place, or tell what 
it will be. 

In speaking of the death of Jesus, Strauss has 
forgotten that they pierced the side of Jesus, an 
act more calculated to kill, than breaking a bone. 
The death of Jesus was no accident to him ; he 
foretold it long before it took place. He went 
to Jerusalem to meet it. He knew it would be 
the effect of his teachings, how it would come 
about, and when it would take place ; he did not 
avoid it. 

And now Strauss writes what he thinks of the 
life of Jesus. He says, " history is gold." We 
say that no history is pure gold ; it cannot be, 
for it is written by man, and man is always 
biased in writing history of any kind. 

On page 38, we find Strauss* reason for trying 
to destroy the universal belief in Jesus, so ex- 



125 

treme, that it would seem silly, if it were not 
vindictive, and we cannot understand it. He 
says that in the present age, no one can have a 
belief in a miracle, but we say that he must first 
tell us what a miracle is. We sincerely believe 
what we have read of the life of Jesus, written 
by those who lived when Jesus was on this 
earth. The Gospels are not a history and they 
cannot be treated as such ; the}^ are biographies ; 
in other words, they are the life of Jesus, written 
by several persons, as they saw it, and there can 
be no better proof of the truth of the Gospel 
account of the life of Jesus, than the effect of 
that account upon the lives of men. If it turn 
them from evil to good, the account is a true 
one, no matter who wrote it, and if we cannot 
be sure who wrote the Gospels, the proof is the 
stronger that they are inspired. 

However, to us it makes little difference who 
wrote them, so long as we know that they are an 
account of the life of Jesus. We all believe that 
Jesus lived on this earth at the time mentioned 
in the Gospels, and we believe that the Gospels 
tell us of his life. There is no foundation for an 



126 ESSAY ON STKAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 

attack on Jesus. Strauss cavils at the account of 
the money found in the fish. We advise him to 
ask common sailors what things have often been 
found in hooked fish when opened by them. 

Page 45. " True religion may be allowed to 
date from Jesus, as philosophy may date from 
Socrates, and science from Aristotle ; and since 
their time important improvements have been 
made and may yet be made." The only improve- 
ment we can make on what Jesus taught, is to 
try to understand the spiritual meaning and to 
put it in practice. " It is easy to say, when con- 
fronting these miracles with science, that the re- 
quired proof has not been given." The proof 
has been given by the inward belief in the signs, 
that is, in the hearts of thousands of Christians. 

" There must be a distinct renunciation of the 
notion that the ideal and the historical, the nat- 
ural and the supernatural man unite in one indi- 
vidual, and that one may be real man, yet at the 
same time elevated above all real humanity." 

We say that this is possible ; a real man may 
be elevated above all real humanity, for human- 
ity is only animal, and many a man can over- 



ESSAY ON STKAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 127 

come the animal in which he dwells, and which 
is real humanity. What is it in a real man 
that enables him to elevate himself above the 
human, if it is not his soul, which is his double 
nature ? The soul, so powerful in Jesus that the 
human body which held his soul was ideal, and 
the power of his soul over the body, in which he 
dwelt, were supernatural. It is this power over 
the human, which Jesus has shown us in his life, 
that we also may gain over our humanity if we 
follow his example. 

Page 47. " How often books appear under fic- 
titious names, and how often anonymous writings 
are falsely ascribed to particular persons." But 
why should the disciples write anonymously, if 
they could write at all ? Surely not to escape 
persecution, for they ran that risk much more 
in preaching Jesus. " When a writing, bearing 
a certain name, is transmitted to us from antiq- 
uity, its authenticity is assured only when it is 
alluded to as the work of the presumed author." 
According to this we cannot doubt that Moses 
and the Prophets wrote some kind of writings, 
for Jesus says in one of his parables, ** They have 



128 ESSAY ON STRAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 

Moses and the Prophets, if they will not believe 
them, they would not believe if one rose from 
the dead." 

" It is clear that external testimonies to authen- 
ticity can seldom be so satisfactory and convinc- 
ing as not to need support from internal prob- 
abilities." How can any history, then, be con- 
sidered as strictly true? If it cannot, how can 
one truly judge the Gospels as history alone ? 

" A clergyman of Hesse discovered some 
papers at Darmstadt from which it appears that 
the real writer of the poem, St. Christopher, 
was a priest, and Frischlin had no more to do 
with it than to superintend the publication, and 
to insert here and there a correction." Never- 
theless, if he consented to have an3^thing to do in 
helping the publication, and in correcting it, he 
did not disapprove of it, but showed his belief 
in it, and gave it to the world. So did those 
who wrote the life of Jesus. 

Page 52. " And the prevailing party did actu- 
ally order all those books which ofTended them 
to be burned." Yes; but we have seen how the 
Gospels were saved from the general burning in 



ESSAY ON STRAUSs' LIFE OF JESUS. 129 

" The Old Documents and the New Bible," by 
J. Patersoii Smyth. Much was saved. 

" There is a pretended epistolary correspon- 
dence of Christ with King Abgarus of Edessa, 
which Eusebius professes to give from the 
Syriac original." This might be true, since all 
in it is true to the Gospel account, except the 
letter, for Jesus always sent verbal answers to 
questions.^ / 

Page 58. " Matthew noted down in Hebrew 
language the speeches of the Lord, and everyone 
interpreted them as well as he could." This is 
exactly what we should do, and not take the 
interpretation of others as being infallible. 

" Luke distinguishes those who take in hand 
to set forth the things believed among them 
from the eye-witnesses." Strauss should tell us 
who were then the eye-witnesses and ministers 
of the word ; this he does not do. '' Neither the 
reference to Christ's exhortation nor the allu- 
sion to the clause in the Lord's Prayer can be 
mistaken in Polycarp's letter to the Philippians 
when he says, ' Pray the all-seeing God not to 
lead you into temptation, as the Lord has said. 



130 ESSAY OX STRAUSs' LIFE OF JESUS. 

the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is 
weak.' " These words alone are proof of our 
double nature, the spirit or soul fighting to be 
God's, the flesh too weak even to try to be 
God's. 

Page JO. ''Justin says, when Jesus was bap- 
tized in the Jordan, the voice from Heaven 
echoes the words in Ps. 2:7. ' Thou art my 
Son, this day I have begotten thee,' and that the 
Epistle of Barnabus states that the Evangelists 
had been the most accursed sinners." We say 
that Jesus, in Spirit, was the Son of God ; the 
light that descended on him was the Spirit of 
God, the electric spark, God's agent ; and we 
also say that it may be possible that the Evan- 
gelists were sinners, since Jesus came to sinners 
and not to saints. A cave in the East is often 
used as a stable, and a fire means a light like fire. 
In these two things it seems to us that Strauss 
is trying to strain at a gnat. Why compare 
Caesar and St. John? the first was all of this 
earth, the last was far above it. 

Page 82. Wh}^ go to the writings of the so- 
called fathers to uaderstand the Gospels ? They 



131 

were men full of conceit. We do not want 
them ; we have the Gospels for ourselves, and 
the promise of Jesus that we will be able to 
understand his words in the Gospels, by the 
help he gives us in our souls. We are to go for- 
wards, and not backwards to the writings and 
understandings of the fathers. All their knowl- 
edge was good for their day, but we have in- 
ward convictions to help us in our day, and 
much advanced knowledge. We should use 
them, and not the inward convictions of their 
day. 

Page 97. We have here an account of the dis- 
pute between Christian churches in Asia, and 
Romish ; and we say that here the Roman 
Church began to add so much that was harmful 
to the Christian belief and religion. 

Page 100. The Apostle John ma}^ have been 
ot low rank, a Galilean fisherman, and yet 
have been an acquaintance of the high priest. 
Strauss, in his book, often asserts a thing with- 
out proving to our minds that it is so. He says 
that John, in old age, could not have been able 
to identify himself with a novel mode of thought. 



132 ESSAY ON STKAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 

We do not agree with this, for many men who 
live long change, and John, who no doubt passed 
all his years in thinking of Jesus, must have been 
able, if not to write himself, at least to dictate 
the Gospel to some of his disciples. 

Has not Strauss in afew^ years changed some- 
what, what he at first w-rote of the life of Jesus? 
Since the apostles could not have understood 
all the spiritual sense of tlie words of Jesus, it is 
only reasonable to believe that whoever wrote 
the Gospel of St. John had received the promise 
from Jesus, the promise that he would send 
enlightenment after his death, which would help 
them to understand his life and teachings. 

Page 102. The Evangelists diflered in their 
writings, because they were different, that is all; 
the real author being tlie H0I3" Spirit, we say 
the Holy Spirit does not difler ; but men, even 
in spirit, must differ somewhat, inasmuch as 
their souls as well as their bodies are individual, 
and that one expresses himself at greater length 
than another. This is done to-day, why not in 
the past? Strauss says It is not to be imagined 
that the Holy Spirit could not have inspired any 



ESSAY OK STRAUSS^ LIFE OF JESUS. 133 

of the writers of the Gospels with what was so 
incorrect. This, we think, is small in Strauss. 
He adheres entirely to the letter ; he forgets that 
the Spirit is not to be taken literally, as we are 
all too ignorant in our small minds to under- 
stand the things of the Spirit literally. Strauss 
will be astonished hereafter, when he finds out 
what literally in spiritual things truly means. 

Page 105. The Mediator between God and 
man, is the daysman in Job, whom we call Jesus 
Christ. We say it may be that Matthew and 
John stand in contrast to each other in the Gos- 
pels, as Jesus came to dwell in the flesh with us, 
and he was also the Spirit of God. Strauss, in his 
book, tries hard to do away with the Gospel of 
St. John, because it has the spiritual teaching of 
Jesus in it. Strauss would have nothing but the 
flesh ; he will have nothing of the Spirit of Christ. 
Renan sliows in his life of Jesus, that Jesus was 
all spiritual, and would have nothing to do with 
the flesh ; so we understand Jesus to have been, 
on this earth. 

Page 114. This also is straining at a gnat, for 
Strauss has been telling us, so far, that the differ- 



134 ESSAY OX STRAFSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 

ences in the Gospels prove that they are not true. 
Now he tells ns that the disciples selected the 
same number of persons cured by Jesus, with 
onlj- a few differences, and he cavils at this 
being so. 

Page ii6. Even if it should be true, that if the 
Gospel of St. John had been discovered now, the 
Jesus in it would be found to be very different 
from the Jesus in the first three Gospels. We can 
understand its being so, for Matthew, Mark and 
Luke were plain men, and they give plain facts. 
St. John lived long enough to study these facts 
in the light of many things which he remem- 
bered later to have been told to him by Jesus 
himself ; and the Spirit made him see these things 
in a spiritual light. If John's Gospel was writ- 
ten later than the first three, it is all the more 
convincing in its spirituality, for John had a long 
life in which to study these things. 

Page 123. Strauss says : '' The fourth Gos- 
pel puts speeches in the mouth of Jesus, which 
suppose a knowledge of the philosophy of a later 
age." If John could write them, or anyone else, 
for that matter, it was more than possible in 



ESSAY ON STRAUSS' LIFE OF JEStJS. 135 

Jesus. We find that Strauss is judging the writ- 
ing of the Gospels, which were written so long 
ago, in the same way as he would judge modern 
writings, and not taking into consideration that 
they are not history, but an account of the life of 
a person, such as never lived on this earth before. 
The apostles had a difficult thing to do, or who- 
ever it was that wrote the Gospels. Our view 
of this case is just as possible as Strauss' view, as 
he cannot possibly be sure of what he tells us 
here, since he himself was not an eye-witness. 

Strauss tells us that the accounts of the life of 
Jesus are unhistorical, and only capable of ex- 
planation by taking into consideration the pecu- 
liar tendency of the writer, St. John. This is 
just the reason that we cannot yield to Strauss' 
arguments against the truth of the Gospels. He 
cannot accuse us of being prejudiced, for he here 
gives as a reason himself for not yielding our 
belief to his own, his peculiar tendency is to de- 
stroy the Christian religion, root and branch. 

Page 12$. Strauss here tells us that ^^ decides 
that not one of the Gospels was written by eye- 
witnesses, but by men who penned down notices 



136 



ESSAY O^ STB A CSS LIFE OF JESCS. 



and speeches and in part inventions of their own, 
and that his tactics are to overthrow the Gospels, 
and make it impossible to know what is true and 
what is false in the evangelical history. We 
would say to him, why take the trouble to write a 
life of Jesus, if you confess, as you do here, that 
your only reason is to combat the critics, whom 
you mentioQ ? Would you destroy the hope of 
this wicked world, and trample Jesus under your 
feet, only to overcome men as human in flesh as 
yourself? Strauss himself tells us, that he not 
only would, but does do so. He says also that 
Nicodemus is an unreal person, that the scene 
with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, is 
nothing- more than a poetic fiction, and the rais- 
ing of Lazarus impossible. We hold these three 
most precious, and what they contain must not 
be lost to the world, no matter what Strauss or 
the churches think about them. 

Page 127. Strauss says : " In mj critical discus- 
sion of the life of Jesus, /exposed the contra- 
dictions and showed the inadmissibility of all 
attempts to harmonize them. / estimated the 
amount of their credibih'ty in every individual 



ESSAY OK STRArSS LIFE OE JESUS. 137 

point of the evangelical history." After telling 
us this, he boasts of having destroyed for the 
world the Gospel of St. John. It is almost the 
same as boasting of having destroyed so many 
souls, for how can Strauss tell the effect of his 
work on timid and weak souls? Does he expect 
us to say to him " Well done ?" 

Page 128. '' In the case of the sick man at the 
pool of Bethesda, the thirty-eight years of his sick- 
ness are set aside as a groundless assumption on 
the part of the Evangelist ; in the case of Lazarus, 
a mere appearance of death, and in that of the 
man born blind, circumstances are assumed 
which only required a skillful physician in order 
to be perfectly curable." Now we wish to say 
that according to this, Lazarus was buried alive 
and remained alive though buried. iVlso, that 
the sick man may have been known to the Evan- 
gelist for thirty-eight years, and that Strauss 
cannot prove that he did not know him. Strauss 
here admits that Jesus was a skillful physician. 
We do not read in the Gospels that Jesus stud- 
ied to be a physician, therefore this proves that 
the knowledge he had of how to cure the sick 



13S ESSAY ON STHAr-.-' LIFE OF JESCS. 

was a knowledge oi ii' i me causes oi sickness, 
and a knowledge of the means lo cure sickness. 
Strauss' efforts to give reasons why all this 
should not be true, are malicious. Strauss con- 
tinues to disagree with all others who have 
written a life of Jesus, and says he is surprised 
that Renan did not open his eyes to the false- 
hood of the raising of Lazarus. We sa}- here : 
*' When doctors disagree, we are not willing to 
believe any of them." It makes no difference to 
us if St. John wrote the Gospel bearing his name 
or not, the Gospel was written by someone, it 
speaks of the life of Jesus, and it is written by 
someone who understood the spiritual meaning 
in the life of Jesus and in his teachings. If this 
unknown person gave the Gospel the name of St. 
John, it was for the same reason that Strauss 
inscribes his book to the memory of his brother. 
Though his book does not give us the life of his 
brother, it is meant to be a life of Jesus. Strauss 
says that the differences of the Evangelists arise 
only from inaccuracy, caprice, or accident. All 
these we say belong to evil, and can only work 



ESS AT ON STRAIJSS' LIFP3 OI' JEStJS. 139 

evil ; we are not willing, therefore, to allow that 
this can be so. 

Page 155. Schwegler says the theological 
spirit has corrected the Gospels at every step 
forwards, it has struck out what it did not like, 
introduced watchwords of its own, till the Gos- 
pel reform established the Roman Catholic 
Church. This we say may be true, as the Roman 
Catholic Church still adds new beliefs and dog- 
mas to its Church's teachings up to this day. 
Strauss says that Matthew wished to play the 
learned man and display his knowledge when he 
wrote of the birth of Jesus and of the taxing of 
Quirinus. We think this very small of Strauss, 
and that he clearly judges this according to 
what he would do himself. It is true that the 
Evangelists were human, but they were sincere 
in what they wrote or told of Jesus, and we can- 
not believe that they wished to play the parts of 
learned men. We cannot see with Strauss that 
the Gospels are false because they do not agree 
to the letter with each other. That each gives 
an account which the others have not, is only a 
proof that they are not written by one person. 



140 K8SAT OX STRAUSS^ LIFE OF JESrS. 

Page 171. Strauss is here again very small. 
He cavils because the word sandals is put for 
shoes, and because Jesus in the temptation 
was in the desert with the wild beasts. As we 
are descended from the beasts, it may be just 
possible that the evil spirits of mankind are sent 
back to dwell in them, until the wild beast in man 
is used up by its natural life. This mention of the 
wnld beasts in the temptation of Jesus may mean 
more than we think it does. These chapters in 
Strauss' book prove that we cannot do without 
all four Gospels, in order to understand the life 
of Jesus. 

On page 195 Strauss gives us his Credo. 
We would ask him if Jesus said or did not say, 
blessed are those who believe the things they 
have not seen. Strauss lias not seen God, does 
he believe in God or not? Strauss says: " Some- 
times God himself on his behalf (Jesus') breaks 
through the chain of natural events and causes 
a supernatural state of things." We ask of 
Strauss to explain to us a cyclone or an earth- 
quake, for they break through the chain of 
natural events. Again he says that the Christian 



ESSAY ON STJRAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 14:1 

faith calls upon science to allow miracles to 
exist within the Christian circle. We say no, 
she does not ; but she calls upon science to 
prove the miracles by scientific explanations, 
which she believes true science can do, and 
which it is too weak yet to have done. Science 
is not true to itself unless it seeks for the 
truth without prejudice, for it is a gift from 
God. 

Strauss says that God cannot do anything 
against the laws of nature. How about our free 
wills? We are nature. Is it nature to kill, to 
steal, to defraud and to plot evil ? Are all these 
things of God? If we can do anything against 
this evil nature, why cannot God also? God is 
separate from this world. Strauss thinks not; 
hence Strauss' impotency to understand God in 
Christ. We are, as science says, descendants of 
animals, and through them, we say we are the 
descendants of Satan. We were then not made 
in the flesh by God, for God cannot make evil, 
and we are evil. Who can say that we are not 
evil ? God, then, only appears on the side of 
the world in a series of individual, successive, 



14:2 ESSAY ON STRAUSS' lAFK OF JKSCS. 

Divine operations. We are truly imperfect; 
who can say that we arc perfect ? 

Strauss says on page 198, *' Ever}' miraculous 
interference of God with the course of natui'e 
would be a correction of the creation, conse- 
quently, a proof of its imperfection." This he 
says in reference to the miracles of Jesus. Now, 
the miracles of Jesus were mostly cures of the 
sick, blind and lame. These three things are 
not nature in perfection ; they are imperfections, 
and Jesus in his cures made them perfect accord- 
ing to nature ; this was not interference in her 
natural course ; it was a proof of her imperfec- 
tion, as Strauss saj^s. If he mean human nature, 
he is doubly right, for as we are the descendants 
of animals, we are imperfect. 

Paoe 200. Strauss says: ''There are no in- 
stances of events demonstrably contradicting the 
laws of nature." We are astonished that Strauss 
should make this statement, for he forgets that 
we do not know all the laws of nature yet, and 
he cannot state affirmatively that what cannot 
be explained is outside the laws of nature. 



us 

Strauss, under the heading of Myth, says that 
the stories of the star, of the transfiguration and 
of miraculous feeding, are all fictions. Now, we 
say that these events are not given to us in the 
Gospels as natural events, but just the opposite. 

Unnatural things do happen frequently, and if 
Strauss has no imagination, in other words, no 
inward thoughts and inward convictions, this is 
no reason why others cannot imagine these 
things to have taken place. 

Pa^e 202. Does Strauss believe in the Bible 
Messiah ? If so, will he tell us something about 
the Messiah? Does Strauss believe in the 
miracles of Moses ? If so, why does he disbelieve 
in the miracles of Jesus ? 

Pag-e 205. Strauss here speaks of the Messiah, 
as understood in the Old Testament, and he does 
not understand that all these things were to take 
a spiritual form from Jesus. The second Adam 
can only mean the life of the soul, and its 
victory over the life in the body. Strauss asks 
why the miracles of Moses and Elias, of which 
so many were of vengeance, were not imitated 
by Christ. He says it was because Christ was 



144 ESSAY ON STliADSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 

of a different spirit from INIoses and Elias. 
Strauss wishes to prove that Christ was not a 
prophet like unto Moses. We answer Strauss 
by saying, Moses and Elias were flesh alone ; 
Christ was the first human being who was all 
spiritual. 

Page 206. " It is not a covering in which a 
clever man clothes an idea which arises in him 
for the use and benefit of the ignorant multitude, 
but it is only simultaneously with the narrative, 
nay, in the very form of the narrative which he 
tells, that he becomes conscious of the idea which 
he is not yet able to apprehend purely as such." 

This w^e understand as a proof that those who 
wrote the Gospels, so as to benefit the ignorant, 
were guided by the Spirit, for they were hon- 
estly seeking spiritual things through their own 
spirit or soul, trying to write spiritual things 
which they understood; tr3'ing to write them as 
plainly as they could. Their case was no differ- 
ent from other cases, no different from science or 
music, or anything where the idea is gained by 
study and long and constant thought, honestly, 
sincerely pursued. The usual result of such 



145 

earnest thought is that one becomes conscious of 
not the idea, but of the trtith of the idea. So must 
the Gospel of SL Jolin have been written. The 
truth of the Divine Spirit which dwelt in Jesus, 
hence the spiritual in that Gospel ! 

Page 208. Here Strauss gives us the Samaritan 
woman at Jacob's well. We have written oar 
answer in our Essay on ** The Origin of Sin." It 
would be the same here. The miracle at Cana, 
the Samaritan woman, the feeding the many with 
few loaves — these are the stumbling blocks to 
Strauss; he cannot explain them, and yet they 
are recorded. 

Page 216. Strauss here says that he has gained 
a victory over the Gospel account of the life of 
Jesus ; but we do not think that he has proved 
his victory, for his saying that he has gained it, 
does not make it so. Is Strauss infallible ? He 
certainly thinks himself so, but that is no reason 
that we should think him infallible. 

Page 2 iS. We think that we should here call 
upon Strauss to give us his true reasons for his 
vindictive hatred of Jesus, and of those who try 
to teach others to know, and love, and follo\y 



i-iG ESSAY ON STKAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 

Jesus. We hope and pray that we will not be 
living on this cartli when all belief in God, whom 
we can only know thiough Jesus, has utterly 
died away. We can wish Strauss nothing worse 
than to hope he may live to see the result of his 
own work. We doubt that his work will suc- 
ceed, as he wishes it to do, for most of us have 
souls, and our souls teach us much that Strauss 
does not know even the semblance of. 

This ends his Introduction. 

On page 221 Strauss says that Christians call 
science, infidel. We say that it is not, and can- 
not be infidel, as true science is of God, and 
seeks the truth. 

Strauss here speaks of the Society of the 
Essenes, who had deep religious and moral 
powers. They seem to have understood that 
they must overcome flesh and blood, if their 
souls were to live. They were dissatisfied with 
the traditional public exercises of religion by 
their people ; they kept themselves at a distance 
from the polluting intercourse of men in general. 
The object of their union was to release the soul 



147 

from the bonds of the body. We are called on 
to do the same if we are Christians. 

Philo says of the Essenes, that they worship 
God not by sacrificing beasts, but by endeavor- 
ing to make their state of mind an acceptable 
offering to God. This, we say, is just what we 
think we should do as Christians. 

Page 240. Genuine piety and morality are 
bound to preserve their power by entering into 
the world and penetrating and sanctif3nng their 
relations with that world by their own spirit. 
We say this is exactly what Jesus did. 

Page 24s. Strauss says : " Plato does not, as 
Socrates did, consider virtue as the only true 
means of attaining happiness, but makes happi- 
ness to consist in virtue as the right condition, 
harmony and health of the soul, and in so doing 
he makes virtue, in so far as it has its reward in 
itself, independent of all impure motives, even of 
a regard to future recompense, which, neverthe- 
less, he emphatically inculcates. Thus he raised 
the idea of virtue as much above the Christian 
idea of it, as the point of view of the genuine 
philosopher is as compared with the ordinary 



148 

religious point of view, and only the foremost of 
the Christian teachers have, in this respect, 
come near to Plato." 

We would answer this by saying that we read, 
in the Gospels, ''When you have done your 
duty you are still an unprofitable servant to 
God ; and also that those who claim rewards for 
their virtuous works hereafter, if they are not 
in heart and soul pure and virtuous in the sight 
of God, to them Christ will say, ' Depart, I never 
knew you,' though they have even cast out 
devils in the name of Christ." How strange 
that Strauss does not see this in the Gospel, but 
then he does not believe that the Gospels are 
true, and he hates Christ. He does not hate 
Plato; he believes that the writings which bear 
the name of Plato are true and written by Plato 
himself. Certainly virtue is the true life of the 
soul, but we do not let the soul live its true life 
within our bodies. The soul does not live its 
true life for the sake of reward, for virtue is its 
nature. If you kill virtue in the soul, you kill 
the soul, as its life is virtue, the same as the 
blood is the life of the body. If )()u shed the 



Ms AY ON STKAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 149 

blood of the body you kill the body. The 
reward of preserving the blood in the body is 
the life of the body. The health of the body is 
the happiness of the body ; the health of the 
soul is the happiness of the soul. It is not an 
impure motive to preserve the life of your 
body ; it is not an impure motive to preserve 
the life of your soul, as Strauss would here have 
us believe that it is. We say that future recom- 
pense, if called at all by that name, is the 
natural result of allowing our souls to grow fit 
to be the survival of the fittest hereafter, that is, 
after the death of the body of flesh and blood. 
If Strauss thinks that Plato is so far above the 
Christian idea of virtue, it is because he has only 
taken the view of the Roman Catholic Church, 
where rewards are the only inducements held 
out to persuade the ignorant to obey the dogmas 
of their Church. 

Pa^e 256. Strauss here says that John the 
Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus, with ques- 
tions which show that John had doubts of the 
Messiahship of Jesus. Yes, it is true that John 
did this, but we read on, expecting Strauss to 



icJ ESSAY OS S^IRACSi Lit E kjF JESUS. 

refer to the rest, that John, seeing Jesus pass by, 
said, ** Behold the Lamb of God." St. John i : 
29, 36. " And John bare rtcord, saying, I saw the 
Spirit descending from Heaven like a dove, and 
it abode upon him, and I knew him not : but he 
that sent me to baptize with water, the same said 
unto me, upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit 
descending, and remaining on him, the same is 
he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost, and I 
saw, and bare record that this is the Son of 
God." St. John I : 32, 33, 34. 

Strauss passes these records over in a way 
which does not do him much credit, and which 
is decidedly mean and bitter in him. Why ^\sQ 
but one example of a thing, and not all that is in 
the record? The sending of the disciples to 
Jesus by John the Baptist, who was in prison, 
and could not be a witness himself to the signs 
of Jesus, was the only means by which he could 
convince the disciples themselves — that is, John's 
disciples. 

Page 264. Strauss speaks of Jesus who, in his 
answer to the rich young man who addressed 
him with the words, '* Good Master," repudiated 



151 

this epithet as one belonging to God alone. We 
say yes, because the young man addressed 
Jesus as though he were human. The Divine 
nature in Jesus he did not see or know ; besides, 
Jesus asked this man a question, which he did 
not answer because he could not. The question 
was, '' Why call me good ?" The answer to this 
should have been, " Because you are the Son of 
God, through the Spirit of God which dwells 
within 3''ou." But not perceiving this in Jesus 
he could not answer; he was incapable, through 
trusting all to his riches, of perceiving the Di- 
vine in Jesus, not on account of them, since, 
though rich, Jesus saw much that was right in 
this young man, but because of his great trust 
in them. 

Page 266. Strauss here speaks of baptism, 
which did not take place in the most ancient 
church until after the death of Jesus, but was 
considered an institution of Jesus himself. We 
say, nevertheless Jesus was baptized by John, 
and we read that the disciples of Jesus baptized ; 
but Strauss rejects so much from the Gospels as 



152 

not being true, that he has a very small record 
of these matters to which he can refer. 

Page 267. Strauss here speaks of many things 
which refer to Jesus. It seems strange to us 
that he should speak of them at all. After 
telling us that they are not true, he should drop 
them and not speak of them again. 

Page 268. Strauss here says that if Jesus had 
told his disciples before that he was the Mes- 
siah, he could not have asked them who they 
thought he was. We think this small, for Jesus 
first asks, "Whom do men say that I am?" and 
when they answer, " John the Baptist, and some 
say Elias, and others one of the Prophets," then 
Jesus asks, " But whom say ye that I am ?" a most 
natural question to ask his disciples in order to 
know if they thought as any of these men. 

Page 26g. Strauss here infers that Jesus may 
have thought that he was to make of the people 
of Israel an imperial nation. We would say to 
Strauss, no, 3'ou are decidedly wrong here, for 
Jesus repeatedly said his kingdom was not of 
this earth. In his temptation the kingdoms of 
this earth were refused by him, and nothing in 



ESSAY ON STRAUSs' LIFE OF JESUS. 153 

the account of his life shows that he wished an 
imperial nation. Strauss has here been using- 
the Gospel account of the life of Jesus, and to 
that account we will strictlj^ keep him. 

Page 271. Strauss says that Schleiermacher 
says in his " Lectures upon the Life of Jesus," 
** The moment that we allow the consciousness 
of a pre-existence in Jesus to be considered an 
actual recollection, the really human conscious- 
ness in him ceases." We say no, for Jesus had 
a double nature ; he had a human consciousness 
and a Divine consciousness in his soul. We have 
the same, but in a very small degree compared 
to Jesus. How can we know spiritual things if 
this is not so ? We know them by the conscious- 
ness of our souls. We would ask Strauss if he 
thinks that there is no such thing as a soul. 

Strauss says, " It is inconceivable to us, be- 
cause in accredited history no instance of it has 
occurred." No, it has not, but that to us seems 
no reason that it should not be. History is 
written by fallible man, and man does not know 
all the works of God. '' And if anyone should 
speak of having such a recollection we should 



154: ESSAY ON STKAUSS LIFE OF JESUS. 

consider him a fool, or, if not, an impostor." Of 
course, but Jesus was not anyone ; and there are 
a great many things related to the knowledge of 
the soul, which a person like Strauss, who does 
not believe in a soul, would never know. *'AGod 
become human should let his Divinit}^ shine 
forth." We do not consider Jesus a God be- 
come human, as there is but one God, and no 
man can see God and live. Man did not die 
when he saw Jesus; he was a human man, with 
the Spirit of God within, which made him the 
Son of God. 

Strauss cavils because we call Jesus the light 
of the world, and because Jesus said that who 
had seen him had seen the Father, that is, God. 
Strauss misunderstands this. We understand 
that Jesus said he was the light of the world ; 
that is, he gave us the true knowledge of God, 
for knowledge is light, and in seeing the earthly 
life of Jesus, the goodness in him, we saw what 
the nature or goodness of God trul}' is. '' Ever}^- 
one finds the well-known expression, /V/rt-/ ^Vj-/ 
7noi, revolting, because it claims for one man 
cxclusivel}' what belongs to all." Jesus had 



Essay on strauss' lifeI of jesus. 155 

nothing to do with state or nation, and cannot 
be compared with those who did. No one can 
study the Gospels without seeing that this is so. 
Strauss says that he is offended because St. John 
states that Jesus said, " I and my Father are one." 
It is an expression very often used, meaning one 
in feeling, one in idea, one in purpose, one in 
understanding, one in any work to. be done. 
Strauss says, *' It is incomprehensible to me." 
That is just it ; he cannot understand the spirit- 
ual in Jesus. Strauss says no man could have 
said, " Who sees me, sees my Father ;" neverthe- 
less, this expression has been used even in 
speaking of human bodies in their flesh likeness 
to each other, and Jesus was more than mere 
man, and he was speaking of his spiritual life on 
this earth. Strauss misunderstands Jesus when 
he says that Jesus was a subordinate God v/ho 
had become man. This is making more than 
one God, and that God is called the Father of 
men. Their Father in heaven means the Father 
of their souls, and not of their bodies of clay. 
We consider that Satan is the father of their 
human bodies. 



156 ESSAY ON STKAUSS' LIFE OF JESDS. 

Page 2J^. This refers to Jesus saying that no 
one can know the Father but those to whom the 
Son will reveal him. We understand this to be, 
that those who believe in Jesus will be able to 
see in him that the Spirit of God dwells in him ; 
reveals means to discover, to show, to lay open. 
Again Strauss refers to the words " without it, 
was made nothing that was made." These refer 
to the creation of the world. God spake the 
words, "Let there be light," and so in Jesus was 
the Word of God, for God spoke to us through 
Jesus, and the Word was God, just as a word 
spoken by a person is understood to be the 
person. 

Again Strauss says, it was not until after the 
resurrection of Jesus that all power was given 
to him in heaven and earth. We understand 
this, as Jesus dwelt here in flesh, the same as 
ours, and the flesh could not have all power in 
heaven, if equal on earth. The flesh in which 
Jesus dwelt saw death before the power was 
given. 

Again Strauss says, " If no one but the Father 
knows the Son, was Jesus so mysterious a Being 



157 

as only to be capable of being known by God?" 
We answer 3^es, in the Spirit, for the Spirit of 
God was in Jesus, and man could not know it, 
only God, who is Spirit, could know it. 

Page 277. Strauss here says, *' The Sermon on 
the Mount has always been, and rightly so, 
regarded as the nucleus of the synoptic speeches 
of Christ. Keim calls it * the most genuine of all 
that is genuine.' Even in the introduction to it, 
the new Christian view of the world drops down 
like a fertilizing rain in spring, compared with the 
ancient world ; it is a world inverted, and instead 
of starting from the external, and that it agrees 
with the internal, Jesus considered the internal 
(soul) exclusively the essential, which outweighs 
an opposing external." We say that this in itself 
and alone, proclaims Jesus, its author, as differ- 
ent in Spirit from the rest of ma'^^kind. It was 
certainly not the element surrounding the young 
days of Jesus. He was not taught these things 
by others. How, then, came he to know them, 
if not by the Spirit of God which was in him ? 

Page 279. '* The Sermon concludes at last 
with the saying, * That ye may be the children 



168 ESSAY OX STRAUSs' LIFE OF JESUS. 

of 3'our Father which is in Heaven : for he 
maketh tlie sun to rise on the evil and on tlie 
good, and sendcth rain on the just and on the 
unjust.' If there is a speech in the New Testa- 
ment that came from the lips of Jesus, this cer- 
tainly did so." Strauss sa3^s if ; we sa}^ " Who, 
then, spoke this speech ?" He tells us of the 
quarrels and fanaticism among men, making it 
impossible, according to this, that anyone but 
Jesus spoke the words. 

Strauss is generous enough to say here that 
the fundamental intuition of God could not have 
come to Jesus from the Old Testament, for its 
Jehovah was a w^-athful, jealous God, recom- 
pensing and punishing strictly, and the Jews 
represented Jehovah, at all events to the heathen, 
only as a punishing and avenging God. There 
was an obstacle to any milder view of his char- 
acter, and the view of God as a Father is foreign 
to the Old Testament. Jesus made it the funda- 
mental view of the relation of God to man, but 
his doing so can only have been the suggestion 
of his own mind. At last, Strnuss is forced 
by his stud}' of the Gospel to allow this much ! 



ESSAY ON STKAUSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 159 

We repeat, from where, then, did Jesus get this 
view of God, if not through the true Spirit of 
God within him ? Before this man's view of 
God was taken from what he was himself, and 
he was ignorant in not understanding that all the 
suffering, sorrow, and troubles were caused by 
himself, and not sent to him by God. The his- 
tory of the world proves that this is so. Famine, 
pestilence, wars, and other evils, can all be 
avoided by knowledge put in practice, and have 
so been avoided. Why, then, say that they are 
sent by God ? 

Page 282. Strauss says that there is nowhere 
in the accounts of the life of Jesus any intimation 
of any severe mental struggles, to assist in the 
formation of his mind. Such being the case, 
the Spirit of God must have been in Jesus. 
Strauss says that Jesus must have had periods 
of cheerful unity with himself, and then gloomy 
struggles, and numerous deviations from the 
right wa3^ We think this is impossible, and 
even though Jesus was acquainted with grief, 
we cannot imagine it. Strauss says that Jesus 
may have had a struggle in the teraptation. 



160 E33AT ON STRAUSs" LIFE OF JESUS. 

We should think that Strauss would accept this 
view of the temptation, as it supports his view 
that Jesus was only man. In denying this view 
of the temptation he permits our view of it, that 
Jesus, through the Spirit of God, overcame the 
temptation. 

Then Strauss says that the inward develop- 
ment of Jesus proceeded, if not without strong- 
effort, still without any violent crisis. He says 
this, and yet he doubts that Jesus was different 
from other men. He also says that the religious 
genius in man would carry on his work in an 
independent spirit. What is genius, but an 
essence from God, and the independent spirit was 
certainly strong in Jesus. 

Page 284. " On one hand we have Jewish sin- 
offerings, and that God would not forgive sins 
without these sacrifices; on the other hand we 
see Jesus, where he observed upright repent- 
ance, faith, and love, at once granting forgive- 
ness of sins, out of the fullness of his own relig- 
ious consciousness." This is allowing much on 
Strauss' part, and we do not suppose he woul( 
allow this much if he did not believe this account 



KSSAY Olt STRAUSS* LIFE OF JESUS. 161 

of Jesus to be true. We ourselves do not think 
that the death of Jesus was a sin-offering, as 
Strauss understands it. We get this idea of sin- 
offering from St. Paul. We think that Christ 
died for us, as he lived on the earth for us, and 
suffered persecutions for us. To consent to live 
on this earth in order to teach mankind the way 
to re-enter Heaven in their souls, when they did 
not believe that they had souls, was at once a 
sacrifice of his (Jesus') life in the flesh. These 
men he tried to teach were the descendants of 
Satan through animals. They only knew the 
animal life, and they believed it was the only 
life, being Satan's children in the flesh. They, 
like Satan, were not going to believe in the true 
life of the soul. They were not taught through 
the flesh that there was such a thing as the soul. 
This spark from God was just alive in them, and 
that was all. It had not grown to consciousness, 
and that was the task which Jesus, sent by God, 
was to work out for us. It was natural to flesh 
and blood bodies, descended from Satan in 
animal shape — whether we call them mankind or 
any other name — to oppose Jesus, even to death 



162 ESSAY ON S'lr.ACSS- life of JESUS. 

— death being created by Satan, and the life of 
the soul beins: deatli to Satan. 

As the Spirit of God dwelt in the body of 
flesh and blood, belonging to this earth, in the 
person we call Christ, Satan exerted his powers 
against that person. The agents he used were 
men in the flesh, which he, Satan, created. The 
powers of Satan are sufferings in the flesh and 
death in the flesh, tlierefore Jesus foretold his 
own death, knowing that the body of flesh could 
not escape from it. He had accomplished his 
work, which was wholly spiritual; he had shown 
us that the Spirit can control the body it dwells 
in, that the soul can begin its eternal life here on 
earth, by knowing God inwardly as Chi-ist has 
shown God to be. He had told us that it was 
the only w^ay the soul can return to God to 
whom it belongs, and by whom it was created, 
and that it is the soul which is the image of God, 
who is its Father, and not the body of flesh, who 
is the child of Satan. Wc think it impossible 
that Christ could have been a sin-offering, for sin 
is of Satan ; and Christ was not an offering to 
save Satan, or for the sins of Satan, or for the 



163 

sins of Satan's descendants. Christ died in the 
body as the natural ending of the body of flesh ; 
and the natural result of the cruelty of the 
descendants of Satan. 

Page 287. Strauss says that Jesus was not 
aware of the drift of his own words, when he 
says, " Not that which goeth into the mouth 
defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the 
mouth, this defileth a man." We say it is 
impossible that Jesus did not know the drift of 
his own words. Jesus taught higher things than 
the small outward things of the Jews ; he alone 
taught mankind that the soul is above the flesh, 
and of more value to us, and the only part of us 
that dies not. What we eat in the flesh does 
not feed the soul, and this is the reason that 
Jesus said, " Man does not live by bread alone, 
but by every word of God." God's words are, 
" The bread for the soul." 

Strauss, in speaking of the law and the pro- 
phecies which Jesus had come to fulfill, does not 
understand that the law is the ten command- 
ments, and the prophecies are what were pro- 
phesied of Jesus. Strauss says that Jesus did 



164 ESSAY ON STRAUSs' LIFE OF JESUS. 

not take part in the Jewish sacrifices for purifi- 
cation and sin. This, we say, Jesus could not do 
and be true to himself, for he was pure from 
sin, but we read in the Gospels that Jesus and 
his disciples kept the feasts of the Jews. 

Strauss does not understand, because he is 
devoid of imagination, that Jesus was able to 
destroy the Temple of God and that he was able 
to build it up again within three days ; that Je- 
sus, in the human body, was the Temple of God, 
as the Spirit of God was in him, and Jesus, after 
mankind had destroyed this Temple by killing 
him, did raise it up within three days. 

Page 295. Strauss says: ** None of the Apos- 
tles even, according to our present accounts, 
had attained to the full understanding of the 
mind of Jesus; this they show by abandoning 
the dangerous position which their Master had 
occupied." We agree here with Strauss, there- 
fore it is for us, with the light of our days, to try 
to understand the mind of Jesus. 

Page 307. Strauss says : ''Jesus, a mortal man, 
charged by God with commissions so exalted, to 
forgive sins, to be Lord of the Sabbath, to be the 



165 

Sower of the good seed." Yes, we understand 
Jesus to have been a mortal man, for as such he 
died, but we also believe him in spirit to be the 
Son of God ; as we have before said, we believe 
in his double nature. 

Strauss refers to the Book of Daniel where, 
after the fall of the four beasts, one like the Son 
of Man comes betore the throne of God, and is 
invested with everlasting dominion over all 
people. Now, let us see what Daniel tells us of 
the four beasts, since science tells us that we are 
the descendants of beasts, or animals, which is 
the same thing. The first beast was like a lioji^ 
and had eagle s wings ; it (the beast) was lifted 
up, and made to stand upon the feet as a man, 
and a man's heart was given to it. This seems as 
if science has spoken the truth. Then the second 
beast like a bear was told to devour much flesh. 
Then the third beast was like a leopard, with the 
four wings of d. fowl, and four heads. Then the 
fourth beast, dreadful and terrible ; it had iron 
teeth, it had feet, it had horns, it was diverse 
(different) from all the beasts that were before it ; 
it had the eyes of a man, and a speaking mouth. 



166 BSSAT OS STBAUSS" LIFE OF .JESUS. 

These animals were all balf-man balf-animaL 
Perhaps this means that thej were generations 
of men descended from the animals spoken of, 
with the characteristics or instincts of these 
animals. These descendants of Satan, the last 
with the speaking mouth, were more beast than 
men, doing more evil than the others. And one 
like the Son of Man can only mean Jesus ; he 
took the form of man, and having died for us in 
the flesh, we are his, and he is invested with 
everlasting dominion over all people. 

Pa^-e 319. Strauss says : " The more Jesus met 
among his own people with want of sympathy 
and with resistance, the more he saw the hatred 
of the upper ranks excited against him, the more 
occasion had he to adopt the conception of the 
Messiah, to prepare not only himself, but his 
followers, to submit to the utmost to oppression, 
condemnation and execution." We say so must 
all suffer who follow Jesus. We think that there 
is no truer proof that we in the flesh are de- 
scended from Satan, than the cruel treatment 
which mankind gives to those who strive to do 
thera good, by teaching them to know real good 



and to give up evil things. The benefit to those 
who are so taught is very great, yet it has al- 
ways been rewarded by mankind with cruelty 
and death, even by those whom we cannot call 
heathens. The heathens themselves give the 
strongest proof that they resist this good, be- 
cause they in the flesh are also the children of 
Satan and animals, untamed and wild. 

Page 320. Strauss says : " There is also every 
probability in favor of the fact that the first 
revelation of the manner of the death of Jesus, 
which he made to his disciples, was most dis- 
pleasing and repulsive to them." Strauss here 
allows that Jesus did foretell his death and the 
manner of it, but that he did not foretell his 
resurrection. Because these things are not, to 
Strauss' mind, historical, he saj'S he does not 
believe them. History, we think, is a very un- 
certain thing, and not infallible, as Strauss thinks 
it is. 

Page 322. Strauss says that, for him, Jesus has 
either no existence at all, or existed only as a 
human being. We say that this is a passage in 
Strauss* book which might have been put into 



other words, and which makes us disinclined to 
believe everything which he has written of the 
life of Jesus, as it shows hatred of Jesus, and 
malice because Christians believe in him. 

Page 324. *' Jesus said that there were some 
among those standing round him who should not 
taste death until they had seen the Son of Man 
coming into his kingdom." Strauss does not 
understand that this means that the belief of 
Jesus in the hearts of his followers, in the inward 
life in spirit, which was to change the outward 
life of the believers, would come before they all 
died. This did come true; Jesus always said 
that the Kingdom of God is within us. Strauss 
is too carnal to understand the spiritual meaning 
of the words of Jesus. He says, in speaking of 
the coming of Jesus, when some go to everlast- 
ing fire, and some to everlasting life, that this 
cannot be taken s3m"ibolically, and as the Chris- 
tian church understands it literally, so it was 
meant by Jesus, if it was given by him. This is a 
mistake on Strauss' part; if the church does so 
believe, it can only be the Roman Catholic 



169 

Church. If there be any everlasting fire it is we 
who make it for ourselves, and not God. 

Strauss cavils because Jesus taught his follow- 
ers to pray " thy kingdom come." He says this 
shows that the kingdom had not yet come. We 
say, nor has it yet come, as so many are evil still 
within their hearts. Strauss also cavils because 
Jesus said to his disciples, "that he would not 
drink again of the fruit of the vine, until he 
drinks it new in the Kingdom of his Father." 
Strauss forgets that Jesus said he was the vine ; 
the disciples are the branches ; and the fruit is 
the fruit of the teachings of Jesus, that is, the 
result of his words in our hearts. Jesus would 
not speak these words again to them until he 
spoke them in the Kingdom of his Father. The 
Kingdom of Heaven being already among them 
when he drives out evil from them by the Spirit 
of God, means that the Spirit of God cannot 
be within us, unless it gives us the Kingdom in 
our hearts. 

Page 332. According to the last part of this 
chapter Strauss believes in a judgment yet to 
come; and that the good seed sown, and also 



170 ESSAY ON STEACSS' LIFE OF JESUS. 

the tares, will have their reward. Good seed 
means good words spoken or written on God's 
side. Tares are evil words spoken or written 
on Satan's side. 

Page 357. Strauss here tells us that he be- 
lieves Jesus to have been only human. We, 
then, can only expect that Strauss will read the 
life of Jesus in that light. What is more than 
human he will not, and so cannot, see. When 
Strauss says that not one of the speeches of 
Jesus, written by St. John, could be rightly 
understood so long as Jesus stood as a human 
being before human beings, he concludes that 
they were not uttered by Jesus. Strauss seems 
here to have come upon what he will not see, 
so he presumes to tell us that, because he cannot 
see that Jesus, besides being human, was of a 
higher nature, he did not utter these speeches. 

Page 369. Strauss says : " It is an obvious ques- 
tion if Jesus, in the cures he made, did not avail 
himself of natural remedies. We ask, '' How^ do 
you know that he did not? Do we, in these 
days, know all the natural remedies for all dis- 
eases ?" We believe that Jesus knew them all, 



171 

and if the gross ignorance and the dark super- 
stitions of the people of those times made them 
believe that cures effected by natural means 
were miracles, this is just what the next century 
will say of us ; therefore, we of this century can- 
not understand the laws by which Jesus made 
his cures. 

Page 391. Here at last Strauss is forced by 
his study of the life of Jesus, to allow, histori- 
cally, that Jesus, in his last earthly moments, 
when a violent and unjust death was near at 
hand, and the terror of that idea threw dark 
shadows over his soul, by his moral force 
maintained his tranquil and Heaven-inspired 
presence of mind. Yet Strauss, having no life 
in his own soul, cannot understand the double 
nature of Jesus. 

Strauss says that w^hen Jesus was asked if he 
asserted himself to be the Messiah, he answered 
in the affirmative. We read in Matthew Jesus' 
answer to "Art thou King of the Jews?" His 
answer was, " Thou sayest." In Mark we read, 
Jesus was asked, "Art thou the Christ, the Son 
of the Blessed ?" This is not, " Art thou the 



172 ESSAY ON STRAUSS' LIFE OF JESC9. 

Messiah," and to "Art thou the Christ?" Jesus 
answered, " I am." Again in St. Luke we read, 
"Art thou the King of the Jews?" and Jesus 
answered, '' TJioii sayest it." In St. John we 
read that Jesus was asked, " Art thou the King 
of the Jews ?" and Jesus answered, " Sayest thou 
this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of 
me?" Beino;- asked a second time, "Art thou a 
king then?" Jesus answered, '* TJioii sayest that 
1 am a king." We do not read as Strauss reads. 
The affirmative which he finds in the answers of 
Jesus as to whether he is the Messiah we do not 
find in the Gospels. The only affirmative we 
find is that Jesus says, '* I am the Christ/' 

Page 395. Strauss, in speaking of the death of 
Jesus, says that a stab with a spear does not kill 
a crucified person, and quotes the Gospel of 
St. John, which he has told us all through his 
book that he does not believe in, to prove that 
only the hands of Jesus were nailed to the cross. 
Though he accepts the Gospel of Matthew, he 
says that the notice there of the watch put at the 
grave of Jesus will not stand investigation, and 
that he, Strauss, pronounces all these sayings of 



lilSSAY OJST STRAUSS^ LIFE OF JESUS. 173 

his in an unprejudiced spirit. This we assert is 
not true, as we have read his book and find in it 
a hatred of the Christian religion and an effort 
to kill the belief in Jesus. He tells us of other 
writers of the life of Jesus, such as Hase and 
Ewald. We would say that many start out to 
write a critical life of Jesus, unbelievers in the 
life and death of Jesus, and in reading their 
books, we should not forget that this is so. 

Page 402. '' The Apostle Paul says nothing of 
the appearances of Jesus before women, who, in 
the Evangelists, Luke excepted, stand in the 
foreground." Matt. 28 : 9 ; Mark 16:9; John 
20 : 14. We say this is for a very good reason ; 
Paul was an enemy of women, and jealous of 
them. 

Page 432. We answer what Strauss here 
states of the resurrection of Jesus by sa3'ing that 
what he has written is against himself. We 
think that there can be no doubt that the Jews 
would have brought forward the dead body of 
Jesus to prove that he was dead, had it been pos- 
sible to find his dead body, which had arisen. 
Imagination, we sa}-, is the life of the soul; it is 



114: ESSAY ON STiiAUSS^ LIFE OF JESUS. 

the thinking of the soul. If one have no imng*- 
ination, how can one believe in the things which 
one does not see? Even leaving Jesus out of 
the question, there is much that one must take 
on faith alone. History tells us things which 
we cannot see ; science tells us things which we 
do not see; our friends tell us things which we 
do not see ; with our imagination we see them 
in our minds; books of all sorts tell us things 
which we cannot see; but is it not possible for 
us to see these things with our minds? Can one 
not imagine the things one is reading or hearing 
about as passing before one's mind ? Well, then, 
why is it difficult for our imaginative spirits or 
souls to see Jesus as we read or hear of him as 
he was when on this earth, and as we believe him 
to be in Heaven? Above all, our imaginative 
spirits should understand his spiritual teachings. 

We close Strauss' book with a sigh of relief 
that we have finished this task. 

Emily Oliver Gibbes. 

January 30, 1894, 



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